Saturday, April 07, 2012

Now is as good a time as any to be thinking about the future of digital (and social) as defined by those of us who provide services or even products around these. If you work for any agency or consultancy—this article is relevant for you. If you're on the "client side" consider it relevant as well as ultimately it is your business model and needs which dictate the market conditions that affect your partners, vendors and professional service providers. I'm writing this piece from the perspective of having worked at several digital agencies—some of which are still taking market share and others which have slowly faded away or been digested into other formations.

Today, I work for a large privately held company (Edelman) with a "practice" consisting of roughly 600 individuals globally who offer services in the "social-digital" space (Edelman Digital). Given that the word "innovation" is in my title, I am always thinking about how we service the market today vs. how will will need to service it tomorrow. I obsess a little about things like comoditization and have seen it happen in other places I've worked at during my career. Below are some things which have been keeping me up at night, with a few ideas around how to address them. They are specific to the "digital-social" space largely, but can be more broadly applied as well.

Talent Importing & ExportingThe ground war starts here. If you work for an agency or professional services firm which operates deeply on the digital and social side of things, you are competing with everyone for talent. From start-ups to brands to the big three (Facebook, Google & Twitter)—it is essential to "import" the best talent while they are still emerging and "export" them into different opportunities across your firm to ensure retention. I am convinced that the Darwinism which happens regularly in this business is connected to acquisition and retention of talent who not only possess the right skills but deeply understand "the culture of service"—an art in and of itself which is critical for any client relationship. In addition to service culture, talent must be able to speak "the language of business", especially when it comes to understanding how our clients build theirs.

Adaptation of Skillsets Our world is changing daily. One of my recent tasks was to co-write a detailed point of view on how Facebook's latest changes affects the skillsets of the people who provide the services we make money from. For example, featured posts essentially converts brand page administrators into media buyers and real time analytics means community managers must become junior analytics consultants as well. There's no training course in the world designed to prepare your firm for the pace which our space runs at—you must have passionate, adaptable teams who are constantly challenging themselves to grow supported by leadership infrastructure which demands and rewards this. Simply put, we adapt or die.

Supply & Demand: The Keys To The Castle As I mentioned earlier I think a lot about the services needed (as well as the ones which will be needed). For agencies specifically looking to gain market share in "social"—the "keys to the castle" so to speak are linked to how deeply we can embed ourselves in the platforms both internally and externally of our client partners. Translation—if you don't have direct access to a client's social properties and/or work closely with their teams, you are in trouble. The digital shops who both survived and are still thriving learned this lesson and are still here as a result. It's difficult to replace a partner who has helped create and maintain your infrastructure. The services we provide today must match market demand and be conducted flawlessly—for example if market demand suggests a need to run global social properties at scale, then you should be better at that than anyone else. Meet today's market demand and execute flawlessly while working on tomorrow's services today.

Ecosystem Development: Establish Your Alliances Today's digital ecosystem is even more complex than yesterday's with new players emerging who attach themselves to the dominant platforms. From social CMS providers like Buddy Media, to data and analytic platforms such as Crimson Hexigon, Sysomos or Radian Six. Relationships with key partners (emphasis on plural) is critical to leveraging each other's strengths relationships and complimentary services. Should a digital or social agency develop their own ecosystems? The answer depends on the objective as well as the execution. Many "back end" platforms can be customized leveraging the API's of third parties. Today, build vs. assemble is a significant decision. Either way, I am convinced that for social and digital firms or those who wish to grow market share here—relationships built now will lead to success or failure later.

Integration: Multiple Roads I could probably write more and perhaps I will at a later time, but this is a good start. While I haven't dwelled much on "integration"—It's also key, however there is more than one road which leads to that particular Rome. Ultimately integration of services (and agency partners) is linked to client business structure. Some are more hands-on, managing integration tightly and look for multiple partners while others seek to consolidate and empower certain partners to lead integration. But, while integration is complex and messy—I believe it's less critical than results. Websites that don't work, apps which aren't used and social execution which ends up in the media (in a bad way) are more significant indicators of success or the lack of, than having an agency structure which looks neat and tidy. In the end, it always has and will come down to execution and results.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Altimeter's most recent report titled "The Rise of Digital Influence" revolves around the theory and practice of "digital influence". A trend that will not die despite the industry's counter movement against platforms such as Klout and the scores of imitators which have subsequently followed. (Full disclosure, I was interviewed in depth for the report). Altimeter rightfully begins the analysis of "digital influence" by calling out the distinction from how we view influence traditionally and offering a brief definition:"Traditional influence is defined as the act, power, or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways. For the purpose of this report, we will use the following as the definition for Digital Influence: The ability to cause effect, change behavior, and drive measurable outcomes online."

The last line is really important as it gets to the crux of the complexity and controversy of looking at digital influence: the difference between measuring the potential to influence action and the actual outcomes of that potential—connecting the two is where the rubber meets the road.

Pillars of Influence

Altimeter does a nice job of articulating "Pillars of Influence"—a similar construct to one I had worked on last year, but I really like how they've fleshed out a way of looking at the building blocks of how you build upon the potential to influence decision and actions. They are:

Pillar 1 — Reach: Relationships form the union of the social graph and define how far information can travel across the social graph and communities at large. Reach is a measure of popularity, affinity, and potential impact.

Pillar 2 — Relevance: Topical relevance is the glue of the interest graph and the communities of focus. Individuals aligned through subject matter create a series of linked relationships that send information along communities of focus.

Pillar 3 — Resonance: The culmination of reach and relevance serve as the foundation for “the score.” Here, resonance is the measurement of the duration, rate, and level of interactivity around content, a topic, or conversations. High resonance ensures that more people will see each post or update. In theory, this number determines the reach of activity and how long it can stay alive in the social streams of online consumers.

Notice that there is no mention of tools in these pillars. This is because, tools and platforms do not dictate what the pillars are and are only helpful in supporting the intent of an outcome. Measuring influence in the digital realm is always a means to an end and never and and itself.

Social Capital: The Soul of Digital Influence

Probably my favorite part of the report and what Brian and I spent a good deal talking about was the concept of "social capital" and it's correlation to an effect. When looking at programs which are fueled by tapping digital influence, it comes down to the social currency of individuals which is much more critical than network size. A large group of individuals who have built up social capital over time can be just as influential as a small highly connected group with similar capital built up. Combine these dynamics with the size and quality of their social graphs and you have the basic chemistry to create an effect. When we raised nearly 17 thousand dollars for a family in need (effect) I observed that it was less about the size of people's networks (it took large and small ones to move the needle) and more about the quality of them.

Influence Metrics: Measuring Impact

Surprisingly or perhaps less so, Altimeter's report lays out a set of high level metrics which can be used as a starting point when building your own measurement framework against programs which involve digital influence. What I noticed most is that nearly all of the below metrics are consistent with many external social programs, and even more broadly consistent with traditional metrics which have always resided within either public relations or marketing business functions. The biggest take away here is that while digital influence tools and techniques may have evolved at the core it's being embraced as an upgrade to both traditional marketing and public relations. Altimeter's metrics include:

• Brand Lift/Awareness — Benchmark where the company is today in social networks, and set goals and KPIs to improve brand awareness and reach.• Brand Resonance — How often is your business discussed in the social web today? Define how resonance will keep your business top of mind and to what extent can be driven through influence programs.• Reach Through Advocacy and WOM — Existing advocacy and WOM initiatives can be designed to influence customer behavior and decisions.• Sales/Referrals — Through special offers and promotions or exclusive incentives for engagement, brands can drive leads, sales, and referrals.• Sentiment/Shift — Negative or indifferent perception can be shaped toward positive or favorable views.• Thought Leadership/Authority — Tapping into the communities of expert individuals can help your brand tap its social capital to contribute to the stature within the community you hope to earn.• Demand — Invest in demand creation through exclusive programs and intentional outcomes.• Trends — Changing behavior is possible once you understand what it is today, how you see it evolving, and identifying the right people and value to help you get there.• Audience — Investing in the size of your community and its quality is a function of design and purpose, and its value grows through strategic alignment and engagement.

Why It Matters: People Don't Change, But Digital Behaviors Do

The report is worth reading not only for it's concise constructs, but also for it's collection of real world case studies as well as it's overview of tools. (Disclaimer: Tweetlevel is an Edelman platform and I am on the advisory board for Appinions). However the report is timely as it underscores a reality—while the basics of communication and interactions remain the same, our digital behaviors are constantly evolving whether it be the newly empowered consumer class or the ability for individuals who have never met in person to weave powerful and influential online networks. Understanding, measuring and tapping digital networks is fast becoming the equivalent grassroots efforts meets rewards programs. As individuals continue to build up their networks earning and spending social capital, businesses will seek to align themselves with the most relevant and connected groups.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Klout has dialed up their marketing efforts, this time placing agency individuals in a March Madness bracket style competition they are calling "Agency Insanity". Critics will scoff at it as another attempt to get individuals to pump up scores, but in actuality the effort is a straight forward marketing initiative aimed at raising awareness, generating buzz and getting Klout to show up in people's social streams. A while back, Klout's founder Joe Fernandez and I discussed something like this as part of a brand initiative and it's interesting to see it in action under a different context.

I'm playing along as are my colleagues Steve Rubel and Michael Brito. Speaking for myself—if I end up winning, I'm going to figure out how to give the grand prize away (a Vegas get away) perhaps to a couple who could really use it. Our team will still get the free Pizza party. Don't like the tactic? Get used to it. Social marketing techniques are increasingly designed to get others to compete while leveraging their networks in the process (gamification leverging social currency). It's actually taking an old model and updating it for a social era.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

The interactive portion of SXSW is over—and by all accounts this year was the biggest (wettest) and probably the most "mature" of the event as more senior individuals from companies across the globe make their Mecca to Austin to network and learn about the convergence of technology and business. Here's a quick roundup of a few things I participated in and what I thought about them:

The Social Business Summit Soars

One of the highlights for me was the Social Business Summit hosted by The Dachis Group which kicked off SXSW. The event is intimate and invite only and I thought it was one of the better "signal to noise" ratio events connected to SXSW. IBM's Sandy Carter did a really nice job setting up the day with her social business construct and the folks at Dachis Group did an exceptional job orchestrating the speakers ranging from big strategic thoughts, to the nitty gritty practice as demonstrated by folks from Discover Card and US Cellular to wrapping up with views on "what's next" highlighting trends such as social shopping. The event caught the attention of Forbes Magazine which did a write up titled "What Do the Extinction of Dinosaurs and Social Business Have in Common?"

SXSW Winners & Losers: Panels vs. Big Data

Legend goes that SXSW panels are hit and miss—and sometimes they even present opportunities to catch up on much needed sleep! I didn't attend many panels this year due to a fairly packed schedule of business meetings, client lunches and dinners and of course our own events, but I did see the interview of Dennis Crowley billed as "Making The Real World Easier To Use". The session was decent overall, nothing groundbreaking—however one thing Dennis talked about that I thought made immediate sense was how location based services like Foursquare can become more utilitarian as they get smarter. For example, as Forsquare remembers places you visit, it could make recommendations on similar places in different locations and serve them up to you. "Big Data", was a re-occurring theme in not only this panel, but perhaps the entire conference. I'd even say "Big Data" was this year's Twitter for SXSW.

Allhat Rides Again

This year marked our fourth "Allhat" event at SXSW—a tradition which started as a simple "tweet-up" several years ago. By all accounts it was the most well attended event we've hosted and my co-host Richard Binhammer and I were relieved that the weather cooperated. The Sun literally came out minutes after we opened the gate at Guero's. One of the coolest things about the events are the photos people take. You can view some great ones here, here, and here.

Measuring Media (Not Social ROI)I also participated on a panel titled "Media Measurement: Science, Art or a Load of Crap" where we discussed the intricacies of what to measure when it comes to digital and social data, how to measure it and what it means. Bottom line, this is an area in infancy especially when it comes to the social side, but for whatever reason—our panel didn't cause the same stir as the panel on Social ROI before us. Below are some highlights from our measurement panel:

As usual, SXSW was a flurry of activity and for some an exercise in being both seen and heard. This year, you could see huge efforts from big brands like AMEX with huge activations including celebrities. Even agencies like R/GA got in the mix by driving a big white bus around with their logo prominently placed. At Edelman we sent over fifty staffers and hosted our second "Nightcap" event. To me, SXSW has evolved from a scrappy tech festival where geeks and start-ups gathered, to a high powered networking event which blends social and business seamlessly. It's increasingly important to be at this interesection.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Rather than write down some notes I thought I'd share a couple of pages from my notebook after the AM session from the Social Business Summit at SXSW. No more updates for a whie as my schedule is packed with business meetings, dinners, events and in person networking. Great summit though.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Next week I am joining thousands of innovators, digital pioneers and social strategists for the interactive portion of SXSW. A highlight of the trip will be joining my former colleagues from social business consultancy Dachis Group who are organizing their third installment of the Social Business Summit—a global series of events which kicks off in Austin. I'll be speaking along side folks like Clarah Shih author of the Facebook Era and who now serves on *Starbuck's board dedicating to navigating social. Other notable speakers include Sandy Carter who has taken the lead on IBM's push for social business integration, Bonin Bough who recently departed *PepsiCo to lead social efforts at Kraft and of course Jeremiah Owyang who has helped define this space.

We Are Here: The Novelty Is OverI'm starting my premise with the fact that many organizations (especially those who have led in social initiatives) are now past the "experimentation" phase of social disruption. Some are even beginning to take a step back to evaluate what they've done in the past—what worked and didn't and how things need to more forward at scale. For many organizations who have gotten past the unrealistic expectations first experienced when social got traction in their organization, they now understand that the changes needed to take place will be long term, gradual and not exactly glamorous. That said, we have a long way to go, and my take is that social business is really only getting started.

From Silos To Layer: Weaving Social Into Your Organization's DNADespite the progress that many organizations, businesses and brands have made over the past few years—the reality is that for many, social integration isn't integrated. It's happening, but typically within silos and some are moving faster than others. Take for example the most recent changes announced by Facebook last week which affect business pages. Some companies responded to the changes immediately while others are still grappling with what they need to do and how they need to do it. Even in the cases where an organization has high proficiency using social in one silo (like marketing and communications) they are grappling with how to apply it to others. There are few examples emerging however which illustrate some convergence—Dominos Pizza for example has recently integrated product development with social marketing in their "Think Oven" initiative which invites customers to submit ideas or predefined participate in projects all via a Facebook app which is built into their business page. What Dominos is doing may be the tip of the iceberg, but getting your customers to work with you for mutual gain is a core value of what social business is supposed to be about.

Weaving The Social Layer Will Take TimeStill, the Dominos example isn't a success story as much as it is a mere signpost on the very long and winding road that is social business. Even with the ability to mine ideas from enthusiastic customers via social networks which are part of their lives, there are still operational challenges which include coordinating activities between the marketing department, agency partners, product development, and even legal. Right now, most organizations are making progress in pockets vs. the whole and it's going to take significant time for social to be woven into the fabric, culture and operations of any company. And, it's likely to not happen to all, but will definitely happen to some. The next ten years will be critical for a business in how it handles these disruptions and opportunities. We've now entered the threshold where the "weaving" of social into the fabric of an organization will take vision, time, resource, money, dedication and most importantly—patience.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Something our team cooked up for SXSW. I'll be arriving early to speak at the Social Business Summit, hosted by Dachis Group. Also, some of the events I'll be attending are on Pinterest here and here. If you're going, see you there!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

I just finished up participating in one of our events for Social Media Week, a global conference taking place in several major cities around the world. Our panel moderated by colleague Robin Hamman included Euen Semple who previously ran social efforts at the BBC and Vincent Boon from Giff Gaff, while it's still fresh on my mind, I wanted to jot down a few key thoughts:

Social Business Is About Applying Purpose & Intent At ScaleThe above diagram is something I started off with and an attempt to describe social business in one visual. At it's core, it's about connecting stakeholders who are critical to the success of your business. And as I've stressed before—it's about executing initiatives leveraging the "3 P's"—People, Process & Platforms. I stressed starting with people. Social From The Inside Out Euen said the following:"There's no point aspiring to be 2.0 outside the firewall when you are still operating at 1.0"While I would not go as far as to say there's no point, (an organization can learn from external initiatives) I concede that Euen's point is well taken as so many organizations don't internalize social behaviors externally. If you can't walk the walk, how can you talk the talk?

Members Only Vincent stressed that Giff Gaff customers are viewed as "members" and I simply loved this perspective. It is exactly in line with how "social" has altered our behaviors. Marketing departments always viewed their target as "consumers" but thinking of them as members and co-creators is a really nice way to acknowledge how empowered they are and how this can benefit themselves as well as the business.

Shiny Objects Be Damned As I write this, I'm looking at a leaderboard created for Social Media Week London which uses Kred to rank "movers & shakers" AKA individuals creating noise this week at the events. It's clever but also a distraction. I referenced some of the efforts Verizon takes to include feedback into their services via forums—as well as levering experts who actively produce content and engage. Often times a social business is one that doesn't attract the most attention, but generates results. Beware the bright and shiny objects that capture attention but don't deliver long term value.

Below is a short video of the panel before it started just to give you an idea of what we covered.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

The skeptical among you may read this as shameless corporate cheer-leading, or a PR ploy (given I work at a PR firm). It's not. You have to understand that I work for a very unique company—in fact, it's been the most unique career experience in my life. A sixty year old company—technically family owned (not public) with over four thousand employees globally and the CEO of the company wears the last name of the founder, his father.

Which brings me to the video above. I had the opportunity to interview our CEO, Richard Edelman on the topic of trust as it relates to our annual study (Edelman's Trust Barometer). We teamed up with the Chicago chapter of Social Media Club and opened up our new floor in the Chicago office.

If you don't have time to watch the entire video (though I recommend it as it's a great discussion) I'd encourage you to fast forward to the last five minutes. Richard says what every "employee" wants to hear. As a CEO, he believes that the top can do their part by cultivating a culture where failure is not shunned, but embraced as part of the innovation process.

What followed was a robust discussion on what social business is, isn't and who's driving the agenda forward in the space both in thought and action. If you're interested in the emerging definition of social business (aka the convergence of enterprise 2.0 and social media) I highly recommend you taking a look. Some of my favorite thoughts:

"the thread that social business is not the same as social media, or social media marketing. Social business is about BEING social, inside and outside the organization. Social media is about DOING communication differently. The former is holistic (ideally). The latter is decidedly less so, but that doesn't make it unimportant."Jay Baer

"I think we're getting a little cute with the wording or definitions; I think that most of the people who've earned respect in this business have long been advocating that the smartest application of social platforms is to integrate them across the organization, including employees and the entire supplier and partner chain. I agree with everything in the definitions of "social business," I just don't think it's that big of a departure from what serious social practitioners have been up to for a while."Christopher Barger"The value that social interactions bring here are on several separate levels. In the most basic form it adds value by capturing all that unstructured knowledge that we still try to manage (classical knowledge management); then comes value from inter-collaboration and relationship networks; then comes value by applying analytics to those collaborations and knowledge capture; and finally the transformation and dynamic/flexibility to managing what used to be very fixed processes"Rawn Shah

"I think to do social media right, you have to know customer service, human behavior, trends, business (finance, forecasting, marketing, high level strategy, departments, inter-department working, crm) and then you need to understand how people use and receive social channels tools. You have to be able to sit on top of a perch and then connect it all to the rest of a company. Not a lot of people do this."Alex Beauchamp

As for me, I do see some distinction between social media and social business. Social media is communications focused. Social business is communications, r&d, legal, sales, customer support, operations, collaboration etc. All at enterprise scale. Internal and external. It's applying a social layer across an organization. Who are the experts here? That's not the real question. The real question is who is ready and willing to do the hard work over the next ten years. That's about how long I think it will take most large organizations to fully integrate "social" even if, by then we are calling it a different name.

London & New York: February 13-16, Social Media Week Our London office is hosting a panel titled "Social Business In Action". A topic I'm very passionate about—then off to New York for an invite only wrap party in Edelman's NY Penthouse space. If you'd like to find out more about that event, please contact Libby.

Austin: March 8-12, SXSW Will be participating in a panel at SXSW, titled "Media, Measurement: Science, Art or a Load of Crap" organized by Trulia's Ken Shuman. In addition, Dell's Richard Binhammer and I are returning to co-host the fourth installment of "Allhat" (more tickets to get released next week). And, Edelman Digital returns with our late evening, Nightcap event to kick things off.

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

The scale above shows the many stages one has to go through in order to become a bona fide self-righteous jerk in social media. Still, there are many people who aspire to reach this peak, but fall short in executing against it. Given this observation, I thought it would be worthwhile to piece together a few best practices which will ensure your status as a social media self-righteous jerk (or SMSRJ). In no particular order:

1. Join The Klout GestapoAll social media SMSRJ's know that Klout is simply evil incarnate and requires a organized force to take on this evil axis of influence wherever it resides. A true SMSRJ will never-ever create a Klout profile and lash out against anyone who dares do so. If Klout is the Devil, then Klout Perks is the Devil's spawn. Perks are to be shunned, banished and those who recieve them should be branded with a scarlet "K".

2. Unfollow Offensive Twitter Followers In PublicOnly seekers un-follow people or companies who they no longer derive value from quietly. It is the true SMSRJ who announces it out loud in some fashion or another. Tactics here can range from a thinly veiled post or an all out campaign. Make sure you get a few social media gurus on your side to link to your public posts and shout your discontent from the rooftops. A SMSRJ really knows how to make a public spectacle of their personal dissatisfaction.

3. Target Social Media Gurus While on the topic of social media gurus, ignore the fact that while almost no true social media gurus actually call themselves that—they are the conduit to becoming a guru yourself. Take them down, one by one. Call them social media gurus every chance you get. Make sure all your social networks know you are doing real work. Tweets like "I'm still at the office knee deep in spreadsheets" will establish your credibility as a non guru. On your non-guru social media blog, write at least one post a month taking on a clearly identified guru in any subject you wish to establish authority in. If you're really lucky, they might even link to you. 4. Analyze Social Media Influencer Lists A new social media influencer list comes out about once a week. Make sure you find them and when you do, interrogate the creator on their methodology. Be sure to use your own made up metrics to throw them off the fact that you're actually upset that you're not on the list.

5. Use The #Humblebrag Hash Tag At Will If it looks like a humblebrag and acts like one—it's a humblebrag and any SMSRJ has the responsibility to use the hash tag to combat this perverse social media behavior. After a few good uses, be sure to celebrate on your next vacation by relentlessly publishing pictures of beaches, mountains and gourmet food on Facebook. Hey, everybody's doing it #humblebrag.

6. Take Up The Cause Against Personal Brands & Corporate Cheerleaders A true SMSRJ creates social media feeds which reek of authenticity. However, shameless promoters are out there at every corner. They need to be dealt with. Let them know when their personal brands have gotten out of control. Or even worse, if they talk about their jobs and promote the companies who support their families. Take a zero tolerance stance pointing out that neither is acceptable. A handful of SMSRJ's have even built successful personal brands pointing out how dangerous personal brands really are. Learn from this and you too can be internet famous in an ethical, respectable and admired fashion.

7. Call Out The Book Promoters Let's face it. Every author out there is using social media to promote their books. Unacceptable. Out them, blacklist them and once you have enough material to write a book yourself, make sure you mention your book in one out of every five social media posts. Just enough to promote it, but not enough to arise suspicion from non-author SMSRJ's.

8. Engage (And Let Everyone Know How Engaging You Are) So many people are out there using social media as a broadcast channel—they never even talk to anyone else. Blasphemy! Make sure that you spend most of your activity engaging with others. Make sure they know you're engaging them. Remind them to engage back. Engage to the point where you risk work deadlines or real world relationships. Social media requires sacrifice. Bring your offerings to the alter of engagement and make sure everyone knows it.

9. Embrace Two Colors: Black And White Nuance is for the weak. The SMSRJ sees only two shades—black and white, right and wrong. There is only one way to do social media right—see steps 1-8 for instruction.

10. Direct Your Energy Toward The Unenlightened Spend the majority of your time watching others. Obsess over their social media habits and dissect their transgressions. It takes ten thousand hours to perfect any craft and this goes double for the committed SMSRJ. Don't be distracted by your own initiatives but stay focused on what others do and allow their behavior to drive your mission in social media—to rectify social media injustices around the world.

*This post designed to make you think. Social media guru not required.

Friday, January 27, 2012

"Social command centers" are all the rage today and it's not without some merit. Many organizations now find themselves in a real-time business environment where news travels faster than sound, and information is set free. As a result, some forward thinking companies have put "monitoring" in place either in-house or in combination with partners. This isn't enough. And to make matters worse, I've seen companies make the classic mistake of buying a tool BEFORE putting any thought into the design that goes into effective monitoring and response, forgetting the 3P's (People, Process, Platforms). Tech platforms are only one third of the problem.

The media hasn't helped. "Social Command Centers" as physical spaces ripped from the playbook of NASA have been documented via Dell, Gatorade and most recently, the Super Bowl. Now, to be clear—a physical space can make listening, engaging and responding in real time effective—but it's not a requirement. In fact, for the organization who wishes to be able to function in real time for the long haul, it's the wrong place to focus on. So, how does any organization who wishes to be better equipped for real-time business move forward? Based on some of the work I've been doing with our analytics teams at Edelman Digital—below are some high level recommendations for setting up your social command center, without the center.

1: Set Up The InfrastructureIf your organization is not currently equipped to take in large amounts of social signals and process that data in real time—it's imperative to start with the three P's:

PeopleMost organizations forget that any initiative is dependent on people no matter how effective the tool and they forget to start here. Don't make that mistake. First, decide how much your organization can invest in terms of training people to both use the tools and have "listening" become either part of their job or the job itself. Go to the organizational design drawing board and begin to map it out. See who has done it before and if you don't know who has—find help here. Many organizations will find out that they need assistance in the form of professional service providers. Even here, work on the org design to determine how resources, both internal and "outsourced" work together for maximum integration.

ProcessAnother area where many "command center" initiatives fail is that they gather the signals, but don't have the internal process in place to share the insights and intelligence. If your organization has spent money on tools or even people but haven't figured out how to effectively communicate (internally) what you're hearing, it's wasted investment. A process must be designed which connects multiple stakeholders together who can quickly get information and perhaps more importantly be able to connect with others on intepreting what it means. Internal social networks which act as collaboration hubs, can play a role here—but again, without a process (and the right culture) in place, the tools won't matter. A system must be designed here which can quickly get information out to key stakeholders across multiple silos, but those groups must commit resources and leadership to support the process.

PlatformsNot all tools are created equal and some perform better functions than others. There's no shortage of tools which started as listening and are moving into the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) space, or social publishing platforms that are extending into the monitoring and response category. There are tools which will work with existing enterprise platforms and those which claim to be end to end. There are also technology platforms who will offer services around their tools and those who don't. The golden rule when choosing a platform is to remember that a technology company at the end of the day always views their technology as the best solution. We typically recommend comprehensive audits here—as well as bringing together both internal decision makers and key partners together before pulling the trigger on a technology solution. It's also recommended that SOME thought be put into both people and process before making a decision on tools. The most common scenario I've seen is the reverse—which leads to more cost and less efficiency, retrofitting people and process to work with a tool which may have not been the best pick in the first place.

2: Analyze For MeaningData. It means nothing without analysis. In order to even get to any kind of meaningful analysis, you mist first set up the right filters and taxonomies. Your company for example may have a product name which also comes up in other industry conversations in total unrelated context. Once the right taxonomies and filters are in place, it requires brains to detect patterns and extract any kind of meaningful insight from the data. These brains are not just the data analysts but also people across your organization who should be pulled into the "command center" and tapped for their area of expertise. Individuals from R&D, customer care and even HR can be relevant here.

3: Optimize Content & Engagement TacticsThere are really only two immediate actions any organization can take from having a command center infrastructure in place. The first is to optimize any form of communication asset which goes out. The second is to optimize any form of engagement (example, talking to anyone in a forum, social network, or commenting on a publication). Both content and engagement tactics are informed by the social intelligence captured, disseminated and digested by the designated individuals who are part of the command center ecosystem. Content and engagement tactics can happen across a number of digital and real world properties. Traditional media, (mainstream), Hybrid (blogoshphere), Social, (networks and forums) and Owned (apps and corporate sites).

4: Monitor & Measure New Signals If you're going to invest in a social command center (without the center), you'll need to be able to measure and report progress, not only intelligence. Every piece of content and every interaction should be designed to create a ripple effect or reverberate a signal which your command center should be able to pick up and track back to the source. The source should be connected to your efforts whether ranging from correcting inaccurate information, to levering social channels to rectify a bad customer experience. Everything we do in the digital space sends a signal. Some are faint and some get picked up. As part of a command center construct, an organization should design it so it can not only trace signals back to their origin, but connect them to business objectives.

It's worth noting that as with everything else attached to the word "social"—a command center construct is not a magic bullet nor a solution for your business problems. However, it can be an effective move your organization makes in calibrating it for real-time scenarios which is becoming all too frequent as a result of social technologies and the behavior it influences. Today, your customers, employees and competitors can send signals in real time. My hypothesis here is that within the next 5-10 years, nearly every organization will have some kind of system like this in place which works to their benefit.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Today I had the opportunity to present to academics and industry experts from the international poultry industry (you can listen to a re-cap via a short podcast from "Agwired" here). During the presentation I was able to share some results from the recently released 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, in which the overarching theme is a general skepticism toward institutions such as government and big business with signs of hope when it comes to empowered individuals.

A Person Like YourselfIn last year's study, it was the expert and even the analyst who enjoyed some degree of trust from the public according to the survey, but this year it is "a person like yourself" who sees the most gain. What I stressed to the group of experts at the event was that this is an opportunity for them to share the stage with "regular" people who have a voice via a variety of social channels and also a responsibility to be "in tune" with the topics and issues they care about and discuss. Last year I speculated that the decline in attention given toward people like ourselves—our friends and peers may have been related to social media fatigue. This year, it's possible that many of us who make social networking part of our digital routines have gotten a bit better at filtering the signal from noise, thereby being both more generous but focused with our finite attention spans.

Regular EmployeesIn this year's survey, CEO's took a nose dive compared to last year reflecting a somber and skeptical mood which likely connects CEO's with the institutions they work for. Only government officials fared worse. But it is the individual "regular" employee who moved from the bottom tier to the fourth most credible and trusted resource. This signals a significant opportunity for organizations who have cultures in place where employees themselves are trusted to behave responsibly and are active in public spaces.

Fragmented Media Consumption (And Production)A recent Mashable article reported that digital ad spending had surpassed that of print—bringing an era to a close and emphasizing the new reality of media fragmentation. The increase in social media (illustrated above) is partially fueling the shift—with social networks driving much of the traffic through sites replacing e-mail shares with buttons that blast out content across your networks amplified by others. Nobody knows this more than the traditional news media outlets who are scrambling to ensure that content is designed for social sharing.

Trust In The Digital Age of EmpowermentWith trust in government, big business and at a broader level institutions down—there remains experts and individuals both who are in a prime position to take their platforms into digital spaces and elevate their position. For institutions, there's an opportunity to improve sense making out of what's being said not only by the mainstream but also talked about via networks, message boards and anywhere a comment button can be pressed. For CEO's, a chance to take a second look at their workforce—instead of seeing worker bees, the connected CEO may see employee ambassadors who when motivated can be the most effective spokespeople for their company.

For the complete findings on this year's Trust Barometer—the data can be viewed and downloaded via Slideshare (below).

Friday, January 13, 2012

Just updated my "Visual Thinking Archive" on Flickr. It provides a variety of frameworks, visual thoughts and non text based strategic thinking would could apply to a variety of business cases. What's a picture worth? It's up to you to determine the worth. For me, it helps the thinking process.

Monday, January 02, 2012

We've always lived and worked in a state of flux but one can make the argument that recent developments in technology, society and business seem to have accelerated the pace of change we have to contend with. Our mobile devices would have been considered fairly high powered computers not that long ago. We live in a hyper-connected state of existence, constantly sending out signals to friends, family, work associates, peers , etc. If this year belongs to anyone, it is the change agent.

You may be thinking—"that's exactly what I am," but chances are, if you aren't frustrated or feeling like you are constantly hitting wall after wall, you may not be the change agent you think you are. It's a thankless job, but a necessary one, now more than ever. Change agents aren't sprinters, they run marathons—and this will be their year whether they know it or not. But in order to do the job (and really, it's everyone's job if you're interested in innovation) there are a few key areas where the seeds of change will need to take root.

Thoughts Change cannot happen without first influencing the thought process—the way we think about ourselves, our jobs our business and most importantly our missions. Change starts with the core of how we think about everything before we ever take action. It is thoughts which drives strategy and strategy which drives execution (when done right). Change can begin with a whisper—often times as a thought formed in our minds.

BehaviorsIf thought is the seed then the living organism which springs from it is the behaviors which take root upon them. Without action, thoughts and ideas serve little purpose other than to inspire—which can ignite change, but not sustain it. A change in behavior can range from a shift in daily ritual, to the adoption of new technologies to reacting to environments in new and unexpected ways. When what we do is aligned with what we think, anything is possible.

PerceptionWhen we realize that we are more in control of the way we are perceived than we think—change is possible. Sometimes altering the perception of ourselves whether we be individual or organization acts as a catalyst to influence thoughts and behaviors and other times it is a result—but either way we change when they way we are perceived is altered.

OutcomeWithout a meaningful outcome which indicates the measure of change that has either occurred (or not) there cannot be change. An outcome can be an attitude—or it can be financial, but it's tangible. Not so long ago, the world thought Apple computer was dead. Having owned my share of overpriced and underperforming beige machines—I lived through that sentiment. Then change took root—thoughts, behaviors and perception of the company shifted and one of the indisputable outcomes is reflected in valuation of the company. Ask Apple's shareholders what they think of change.

2012 belongs to the change agents. But real change takes a complex formula of vision, perseverance and stubbornness to pull off.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Ended the year with a flurry of activity. We went public with our newly elevated offering around social business—have delivered significant milestones with several clients and wrapped up my frequent air travel for the year. The next couple of weeks will be spent catching up with family, friends and even some snowboarding. Here's to you and yours in 2012.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

If you Google the phrase “social business” you’ll get a variety of results returned. One of the first and perhaps oldest is a Wikipedia entry, which describes “social business” as “a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today.”

The Wikipedia entry states the following: This article is about a business with a social objective. For organization designed around social tools, social media, and social networks, see Social media. The number one position (at least on my search) serves up a web page from IBM, which describes social business by saying, “People don’t do business with companies.People do business with people.Here is why―and how—to become a Social Business.”

While both are correct, the definition that IBM outlines not just the idea, the theory of social business, but the practical application that we are seeing in the industry today. What Yunus envisioned, IBM has put a structure and focus around and broadened to include doing business in a connected age. In light of this, here are a few considerations for how “social business” might break down for you and why it’s related to social media, but not the same.

Social Brand + Social Enterprise = Social Business

Remember this simple formula. A social brand is what your customer feels (perhaps being engaged on social platforms as part of the customer experience), while a social enterprise internalizes social as part of the way employees collaborate and how the business interacts with partners. The two, add up to doing business in a social and connected way. It means being plugged in from the start and incorporating feedback loops. In this regard, many businesses that run forums where they listen and engage with their most active customers already understand the foundation of social business.

Believe In Life After Likes

Social business is bigger than Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and (insert social network here) combined. It’s about applying a social layer across the entire organization—connecting a company to all of its stakeholders (customers, employees, business partners, shareholders, etc). What we’ve seen in the past few years was an explosion of social across mostly marketing and communications departments, but what’s coming in the next several years is social integration at the enterprise level. A great starting point to assess if your company is moving in the right direction is to count the heads of the people working on social integration initiatives full time. If you don’t get past counting to one, you’re in trouble.

Think Beyond Media

There are opportunities to leverage social media as a new way to spread a message, be heard, tell a story or get a story amplified. The media industry has, notably, been disrupted by social media as blogs and real-time communications have gained traction among audiences and eaten away at attention newspapers, radio and television news properties once exclusively served. In response, media companies were forced to integrate social media into their operations, empowering journalists early on to create their own blogs, and over time to become deeply integrated into social networking platforms. This was not a mere media tactic, but a shift in how media companies functioned and conducted business. Born out of necessity or not, the media industry showed how to become a more social business.

Get Social By Design

Social media projects are typically constructed of experiments, skunk works and unsanctioned projects, which launch and take shape before most people across a company even realize they are happening. Some of these experiments are successful; many are not—but organizations find out after the fact that there is something powerful happening within their audience. Social business benefits from a more thoughtful and disciplined approach. Social business requires planning—taking stock of every social-digital embassy, property and initiative (both internal and external) and assessing what should stay, what needs formal investments and what goes to the chopping block. The entire business strategy for an organization must be considered through this lens of social business. This “design” process—an intentional and purposeful approach—allows for social media, and truly social thinking, to be integrated and scaled.

Learn To Become A Matchmaker

Nobody owns “social business” — – but everyone feels its influence. Social business planning must be championed by leadership, built into the efforts to flatten management structures and bridge the gaps between organizational silos. The CMO and CIO must join forces, and invite the heads of HR, R&D and customer service to be a part of the same conversation. Social business change agents must also become matchmakers, because getting a video to go viral will seem easy in comparison to getting people in different departments to come together around social.

Remember that Google search result I mentioned a few paragraphs back? The number three result for social business links to an article from Fast Company titled “Move Over Social Media, Here Comes Social Business”. Its prime search rank is proof that social extends beyond marketing and media. When Microsoft decided to open their SDK (Software Developer Kit) for Kinect to developer communities, they made a calculated decision that value would flow back to the company as it simultaneously benefits developers. Even organizations such as NASA have reaped rewards from the decision to be a social business. This is a sign that in being a social or connected business—the end goal is value for multiple stakeholders, and for both business (and society) that’s a good thing.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Each year at this time, I look forward and predict trends in social media for the coming year. But first, I look back at my predictions from last year. How'd I do? Not bad.

Social media continues to move forward toward business integration, a trend that I identified last year. In a joint study from Booz & Company and social platform developer Buddy Media, 57 percent of businesses surveyed plan to increase social media spending, while 38 percent of CEO's label social as a high priority.

I was also partially accurate in predicting that Google would "strike back" in 2011. They did, with Google Plus, a formidable initiative that acts as Google's "social layer" to the Web. Part social network and part social search, Google Plus has industry observers scratching their heads, wondering if Facebook will be given a run for their money or if the service evolves into something complimentary in a highly social Web.

I had one big swing-and-miss on Facebook's intrusion in the location-based services war. While Facebook still supports location tracking in a number of ways, it has not put Foursquare out of business. Foursquare still enjoys a niche audience of highly active participants who enjoy telling the world where they are and post pictures to prove it. It is however worth noting that Facebook recently acquired location based network Gowalla, so continue to watch this space.

So what can we expect in 2012 in a world that seems to grow ever connected by the hour? Here are six predictions to ponder, in no particular order:

Convergence Emergence. For a glimpse into how social will further integrate with "real life," we can look at what Coca Cola experimented with all the way back in 2010. Coke created an amusement park where participants could "swipe" their RFID-equipped wristbands at kiosks, which posted to their Facebook account what they were doing and where. Also, as part of a marketing campaign, Domino's Pizza posted feedback — unfiltered feedback — on a large billboard in Times Square, bringing together real opinions from real people pulled from a digital source and displayed in the real world. These types of "trans-media" experiences are likely to define "social" in the year to come.

The Cult of Influence. In much the same way that Google has defined a system that rewards those who produce findable content, there is a race on to develop a system that will reward those who wield the most social influence. One particular player has emerged, Klout, determined to establish their platform as the authority of digital influence. Klout's attempt to convert digital influence into business value underscores a much bigger movement which we'll continue to see play out in the next year. To some degree everyone now has some digital influence (not just celebrities, academics, policy makers or those who sway public opinion). But for the next year, the cult of influence becomes less about consumer plays like Klout and more about the tools and techniques professionals use to "score" digital influence and actually harness, scale and measure the results of it.

Gamification Nation. No we're not taking about video games. Rather, game-like qualities are emerging within a number of social apps in your browser or mobile device. From levels, to leaderboards, to badges or points, rewards for participation abound. It's likely that the trend will have to evolve given how competition for our time and attention this gaming creates. Primarily, gamification has been used in consumer settings, but look for it in other areas from HR, to government, healthcare and even business management. Perhaps negotiating your next raise will be tied to your position on the company's digital leaderboard.

Social Sharing. Ideas, opinions, media, status updates are all part of what makes social media a powerful and often disruptive force. The media industry was one of the first to understand this, adding sharing options to content, which led to more page views and better status in search results. What comes next in social sharing is more closely aligned with e-commerce or web transactions. For example, Sears allows a user to share a product or review with their networks directly from the site. Sharing that vacation you just booked, or recommending a product, or service from any site to a social network is where sharing goes next. We probably don't know what we are willing to share until we see the option to do it.

Social Television. For many of us, watching television is already a social act, whether it's talking to the person next to you, or texting, tweeting, and calling friends about what you're watching. But television is about to become a social experience in a bigger and broader sense. The X Factor now allows voting via Twitter and highlights other social promotions, which encourages viewers to tap social networks while they watch. Another way media consumption is becoming social comes from a network called Get Glue which acts as something of a Foursquare for media. Participants can "check-in" to their favorite shows (or other forms of media) and collect stickers to tell the world what programs they love. Watch for more of this this year as ratings rise for socially integrated shows.

The Micro Economy. Lastly as we roll into 2012, watch for a more social approach to solving business problems through a sort of micro-economy. Kickstarter gives anyone with a project, the opportunity to get that initiative funded by those who choose to (and patrons receive something in return). A crowdsourcing platform for would be inventors called Quirky lets the best product ideas rise to the top and then helps them get produced and sold while the "inventor" takes a cut. Air BnB turns homes into hotels and travelers into guests, providing both parties with an opportunity to make and save money. These examples may point to a new future reality where economic value is directly negotiated and exchanged between individuals over institutions.

These are a few emerging trends which come to mind. As with anything, looking to the past often gives us clues for what may come in the future. Please weigh in with your thoughts: where do you see "social" going in 2012?

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Today marks my two-year anniversary at Edelman, or what we affectionately like to refer to as an “Edelversary”. So much has changed in the industry since joining the team here—we are truly working in a real-time business environment. We’ve seen “social” move from an item to be checked off the list from major brands to something they are genuinely grappling with in terms of integrating at scale across the enterprise. At Edelman Digital, we’ve always approached social a bit differently from others—focusing on the fact that much if it revolves around human-to-human interactions (we now call this community management), but if social is to scale—it must begin to spill out of the marketing silo and truly influence how we do business. We believe a connected business is better positioned for the future than a business, which remains disconnected and non adaptive.

Today, we’re announcing a partnership with Edelman Consulting led by Mike Kuczowski, in which we are actively elevating our services around social business to meet what we believe will be the opportunity in the years to come. In order for a business to truly extract value from social initiatives, we must consider not only marketing but how it impacts research and development, human resources, innovation, business intelligence and other facets of an organization which help drive a business forward. Michael’s team has deep experience solving complex business challenges while our digital team possesses incredible savvy and a global perspective for how social-digital operates at scale (folks like Michael Brito, Zena Weist, Robin Hamman, Dave Fleet, & Chuck Hemann to name a few).

Together, we’re looking forward to elevating the game for companies who truly wish to push their social initiatives beyond acquiring fans and followers. As an initial gesture, we are openly putting our approach out on the social web, which outlines not only our joint philosophy on social business planning but also, the methodology we use when working with clients. We believe that over the next ten years, most businesses will move past the ROI question of social—and get to work on doing business in a connected age. This will require gradual if not steady change and a commitment to evolving business practices. We’re looking forward to partnering with likeminded organizations and individuals who see the world in a similar fashion.

You can read more information on this initiative here. We’re excited to play our part in moving the discussion of social business from philosophy to action.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

I didn't attend LeWeb this year, but judging by the chatter, one of the more discussed talks was given by Forrester's CEO, George Colony who outlined three "thunderstorms" approaching the tech & business world. I just finished watching his talk, and thought it would be interesting to outline portions of his talk with my take layered on it:

Thunderstorm 1: The Death of The WebYou'll have to watch the video (above) to grasp the full intricacies of what George is putting forth, but essentially he's making a call that app economies which have the potential to tap both processing power and the cloud, will change the Web and move it away from a network/browser model to something which leverages devices, apps and the cloud in a more powerful way.

My Take: Scale & Sustainability vs. Experience I get what George is saying and claiming the death of anything gets headlines, but really what this will likely come down to is user experience vs. sustainability and scale. Apps already show promise of providing better experiences than browser/network, but a question remains how scalable it is for enterprises vs. consumers. While HTML 5 is already working on a more stable browser experience, apps are often dependent on OS systems. What's more probable is that the Web as we know it doesn't die—but loses dominance in the consumer area specifically. For businesses specifically, the demand will be formed around what model scales and can be sustained globally over time.

Thunderstorm 2: Social SaturationSocial is running out of hours and people meaning there is finite demand to meet the current glut of social start-ups and networks competing for our attention, usage and loyalty. As a result, we are moving into a "post social" world in which we see the demise of platforms like Foursquare which don't offer enough value to survive. The post social web will see new or evolved players who offer efficiency and value.

My Take: Value Is In The Eye of The BeholderI think George is right on the bubble assessment but claiming that social platforms will move away from the Foursquare's of the world to platforms which offer concrete effiiencies and value is debatable. Both Twitter and Facebook emerged and evolved as different tools from which they started. Essentially the free market will demand what happens here, but it is likely that the ones who succeed will look more like a Kickstarter over yet another photo/location sharing network.

Thunderstorm 3: The EnterpriseGeorge cited that 72 percent of enterprises are either interested in or already implementing social technologies as part of how their business operates. He cited a number of players in the enterprise space such as Salesforce, IBM and Microsoft and hinted that these could evolve and new players could emerge as well. He also noted that one of the core reasons enterprises are interested in social has a lot to do with their customers (the primary focus of enterprise social as he puts it).

My Take: Social BusinessGeorge isn't just talking about the internal social enterprise, he's talking about extracting business value from social, like more efficient employees, better business decisions made from data and data analysis, and improved products and services informed by customers to give a few examples. Most organizations are in their infancy of figuring out how to get real value from a newly connected environment and I agree that it's going to take a changing of the guard over time but there are massive opportunities. He's essentially describing social business, which over the next 10 years will need to be executed upon.

Monday, November 28, 2011

I was recently invited to our Toronto office to talk about social business—both what it is and what's in store for organizations who seek to integrate social as part of how they do business. This is probably the best way to define social business vs. media. While many organizations seek to leverage social media as part of communications, (such as marketing) social business seeks to extract value from doing business in a more social way. When we talk about social business planning, our focus shifts from merely thinking about the media universe to adding purpose and intent behind how we harness "social" for business purposes. And all of this is still the tip of the Iceburg. We'll be talking more about social business planning in depth in the months to come.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

What’s the next big thing after “listening”? It has something to do with data—but more importantly the decisions a business makes after sifting through the data and understanding what impact it can have. The social-digital sphere as it turns out is full of data. Some of it is conversational data, some of it is search related, but all of it leaves a digital trail of clues for us to follow, only it’s up to us to decipher those clues. (hint, Facebook loves your data.)

As social media has made its way into almost every communications program, we have also seen the need for more advanced approaches to monitoring intensify. In fact, monitoring as a discipline is being replaced by listening. What’s the difference? The term monitoring implies a passive action. If we’re monitoring, we watch for mentions of our brand for the purposes of acting in case our reputation is threatened. If we’re listening, we’re using that data for more aggressive action either in terms of real-time content development or the eventual use in the communications planning process.

Lets explore both of those models for a second…

Listening for Program Planning

The most common model for listening is using the data for program planning. It’s a very linear process, and typically takes several weeks to fully execute. With this model we gather data on our brand, competitors and category, and develop insights that inform a strategy and tactics. It’s important to keep in mind that insights derived from social conversations have application well beyond social. Those key learnings can be applied to hybrid media, owned media and traditional media properties. After we’ve used the data for program planning we execute and then measure.

Listening for Real-Time Content Development

With this model, our goal is to use information we’re gathering from social media conversations about our brand, competitors and category to inform the development of content in real-time. The additional layer with this model is that we’re listening to social conversations with the intention of spreading the insights we’ve gleaned to other parts of the organization. It’s our belief that social conversation data has application across several different parts of the organization, including product planning, CRM, strategic planning and human resources. After we’ve determined where the information should be sent within the organization, we determine where and how we communicate. When that piece of communication has been issued, a new signal has also been created for us to analyze and measure. This cycle is much more condensed than the previous model – typically spanning days instead of weeks to months.

Which of these models is best for you? The answer is you probably need a combination of both, especially if you’re engaging your community in real-time. The key to both is insights that help the entire organization. If we’re mining consumer conversation data, we need to be thinking about the organization more holistically. If we see a conversation that our product planning team could benefit from, we need to be looping them into the data mining process.

While we are focusing on looking at and deciphering data (signals) in the communications space, It’s our view that listening is going to continue to evolve and that we’re already starting to see the beginnings of true social intelligence systems within larger companies. That means we’re listening to conversations in real-time, and making business decisions based on the insights we can glean from the data. Walmart Labs for example is experimenting with analyzing conversations and trends on Twitter to impact how they stock their shelves. This experiment gives us a glimpse into the future of integrating social data into business intelligence.

Are you leveraging either of the above models? Do you think social data has a role both within and outside of the communications realm? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Visual storytelling is nothing new. We only need to look to the earliest signs of humanity for proof—simple paintings on the walls of caves tell the story that people are a visual tribe. Today, it seems, communications must be visual in order to be compelling, as well as to compete with the massive amount of information available to us at any given moment (even Google acknowledged this in 2001 by introducing image search). Whether it’s a web video, infographic, or illustration, visual assets can communicate a wealth of information rapidly, and in ways that our brains process differently than other, more traditional mediums.

The secret to producing these compelling, yet bite-sized morsels of information is having “visual literacy,” or being able to think in pictures. Don’t confuse this with being an artist or designer. Anyone can think visually—or learn to look at the world through this type of lens—and then work with a visual communicator (a designer or producer) to craft a digestible visual deliverable, which earns our time, attention and encourages us to take action.

As someone who thinks visually, I want to share five tips that I believe will work for anyone who is looking to communicate and influence through a medium that transcends the written word:

1. Empathize: See the world as a child

Most of us drew pictures before we began writing. But now that words dominate our communications, it’s possible we have to do some neurological re-wiring to take our brains back to that point where simple, elegant pictures help us tell stories. I recommend three steps: 1) Observe everything, especially the minute details. 2) Ask questions; especially the ones that make you feel unenlightened. 3) Resurrect your sense of exploration; in other words, re-ignite the curious portion of your brain. Children have a way of noticing the little things we take for granted. They are immensely curious and never lack for questions. Putting yourself in a more “child-like” mindset will set the stage for all kinds of thinking, including visual.

2. Memorize: Commit thoughts to memory

Words can be fleeting—they can at times be like the wind, but images often sear into our memory. To start the visual thinking process, it’s helpful to capture thoughts not just in words but also by simple pictures. Stick people and basic shapes are your biggest allies in this stage of transforming yourself to become a more visual communicator and we should never allow our fear of “drawing” get in the way. My friend, Dave Gray, a great visual thinker, draws better than I do, but I still scrawl down messy shapes when I do my most strategic thinking. What’s important is capturing a visual thought in the moment, not the artistic quality of what you are documenting visually.

3. Analyze: Take a step back

The first two steps are meant to open your mind and get you capturing visual thoughts while getting some creative juices flowing. If you’ve done this right, you’re going to be attached to your visual subject. This is where you need to take a step back. Look at the visual story you’re developing objectively. Are you focusing on form over function —is it compelling and worth sharing, is it objective or opinionated enough? Take a step back and think of yourself as the end audience–get feedback from others, but analyze that objectively as well.

4. Synthesize: Filter signal from noise

If you’re a word person, you might relate to this process as “editing,” but for really effective visual thinking I think a better word would be “synthesis.” Good synthesis involves taking a lot of information and distilling it down to a core set of thoughts fueled by an insight into what will connect with your viewer. This is where the “art”—for lack of a better word—comes into play. A word of warning: this takes practice. Being able to synthesize complex thoughts and boil them down to an essence means finding that “nugget” which will resonate. The only advice I can give here is that you’ll know it when you see it, and sometimes it’s more obvious than you think.

5. Visualize: See it, then do it

The final step is to think of the right visual model to help tell your story—and to execute it well. Focus on visual metaphors to tell your story. See the idea in your mind and then direct it so that that it comes to life. If you need help, hire a creative team and work with them to improve your visual thinking.

When I created the “agency ecosystem” (above) several years ago, the visual thinking started as circles in a four way Venn diagram. I thought that the circles looked like leaves, so I used the metaphor of a plant, which made the story even better because the roots served as a powerful metaphor to communicate foundational needs.

Final Thoughts

By now, the little voice in your head might be saying, “That’s great, but I’m not creative, I don’t think that way.” Ignore that voice. You may be on a path in life that has rewarded other parts of your brain, but we are all born with the ability to create. If you want to communicate visually, you have to think visually. You don’t need to be able to execute those ideas yourself, but you can practice the above steps to start the visual thinking process. I am not going to recommend you read any books to get you started—the reading may distract you from actually doing. My suggestion is to start by “drawing” out the things that you see as obstacles to thinking creatively (i.e., think clock if you don’t have the time), then develop a strategy for overcoming them.

"The top influencers driving conversations Saturday are shown in the graph below. With the exception of the BlogWorld handles, these were conversations that were driven by reactions to the presenters and their panels."

Now, I'm flattered that I somehow ended in good standing here, but it's worth noting that what we're looking at is volume of digital conversation and not digital influence, though one could say that volume of conversation is an indicator of digital influence when it comes to measurement. Metrics aside, I thought I'd offer some insights as to what put me in this spot since I was involved.

Attendees Were Hyper Connected & Hyper EngagedI didn't have the largest session at the event, but looking at the crowd who attended—I noticed that many of them were practitioners in the industry with high quality followings even if they were not the size of a Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan type network. Also, the attendees of my session were hyper-engaged and they displayed this by tweeting up a storm.

Soundbites & Mental Models Stick My presentation was full of short, sticky phrases and frameworks—designed for tweets and social note taking. This is no accident—I would not be worth my weight as a communicator if I were not able to break down communications into memorable bits worth sharing.

Style & Substance = ConversationBeing the event was a blogger heavy conference, I felt that I had to entertain a bit in addition to providing enough detail and meat to make it worth the time, attention and digital conversation of the attendees. I started off the presentation with a few provoking and even humorous slides, played a mini inflatable guitar and then dove into a series of detailed concepts followed by examples and case studies.

For whatever reason, I had the right mix of content, audience, timing and most importantly—people who were more than willing to talk about whatever it was that I was talking about. It's worth noting that as much as I would have liked to leverage my own social networks of 70+ thousand friends and followers that I couldn't because I was up there talking. In short, driving conversation online takes two things: something worth talking about and a distribution network. In an event crammed with many great speakers, I was fortunate to have both that day.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

From a recent Keynote I delivered at the Constellation Connected Enterprise. "Design" is more important than ever, but greatly misunderstood as a business tool. In addition to the numerous business process design models in the deck—I used Facebook's browser experience as an example of a design problem. Facebook is in the "feature-itis" stage of their ecosystem design and I suspect they know this and will work to fix it before the experience becomes too complex for participants to tolerate. Enjoy the slides—a collection of work and other examples to illustrate how design and business strategy work together.

Friday, November 04, 2011

I've just gotten off three business related conference calls and am writing this from a hotel room in Los Angeles as I'm about to head out to Blogworld (speaking here tomorrow). Blogging on the fly is probably the last thing I should be doing. But yesterday I noticed several tweets and I've also had a number of e-mail exchanges with people who are motivated by the "Indivisible" wrist band which is part of a Starbucks initiative I wrote about recently.

Again, while Starbucks is an Edelman client, I have no affiliation with this initiative whatsoever other than as a citizen. Here's why: while walking through some of the Occupy Wallstreet protests in Manhattan and also seeing them in other cities and on the news—I couldn't help but feeling somewhat alienated. While sympathizing with the reasons why people are hitting the streets, I just don't relate to the tactics. Seeing someone carry a sign asking the government to pay for their college education doesn't resonate with me.

So. If any of this stirs you as it has me. I'm asking you to do four things.

1. Get the wristband.2. Tweet about what "indivisble" means to you—and use the #indivisible hash tag (it's not official).3. Use any social network, e-mail, face to face...tell others how you feel. 4. Post pictures here (or anywhere).

Can a brand start a movement? Only people can, but people are everywhere—behind brands, companies and out in public. Again. This is a personal pet project of mine. Because I care about what's going on too. And I believe we can do anything.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Over forty years ago my parents came to the United States without much to their names to describe it generously. They struggled, started a family without secure or decent jobs and ultimately started a small business which was enough to sustain their family and see three children through college and even grad school.

Earlier this morning, I saw another Tweet which linked to the story on CNN and for whatever reason, felt prompted to take the elevator down to our building lobby to see if they had the five dollar wristbands affiliated with the program (the word indivisible is inscribed on it). I bought one immediately. You can look up the details of the initiative yourself but for me, there's something about this that strikes a chord and I want to be a part of it. My parents were entrepreneurs, I have a job I love with a great company because of an entrepreneur, and if we're going to make a comeback, it will be because of entrepreneurs—people who invent and reinvent themselves.

In the spirit of full transparency, Starbucks is a client of the company I work for (Edelman). But that has nothing to do with this post or the reason I bought the bracelet and the reason I'm going to buy more. The first two will go to my parents and I'll tell them why I got it for them. The others... I'm not sure. I'll figure it out as I go along and if I donate that will be my business. But sometimes hope comes in unexpected places and we need to be reminded of the resilience which makes us who we are.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Back in 2006, I attempted to visualize how digital influence spread through the blogoshpere using a metaphor of "ripples". Fast forward 5 years and there's a really cool new feature you can play with on Google Plus called "Ripples". See below:

I really love what Google is doing with this visualization. Here's how it works as best I can tell. In this visualization you can see the source of the share indicated by large type. In this case, Jeanette Halgreen was the first in this particular digital influence ecosystem to start the sharing. You can follow the ripples which spill out in multiple directions. Ripples shows larger spheres where there is a lot of sharing happening and it shows you who is sharing from who and displays direct shares and total number of re-shares.

You can even play back Ripples to watch the spread of a particular post which tracks the movement of the media over a timeframe and visualizes it allowing you to see who, and where reverberation was generated.

So what's in it for business? For starters it gives media professionals a test area to see how media spreads, who is spreading it—what makes something sharable and how connections work. Of course it's only a small sample (Google Plus) but it's a nice little tool to use if you're interested in media and network effects. Nice work Google.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

This blog post was written by Marcus Taylor, co-author of the book Get Noticed and head of social media at SEOptimise. You can follow Marcus on Twitter here.

I’ve always been fascinated watching what content gets shared by the masses and what doesn’t. I don’t believe in the myth that ‘content is king’, I also don’t believe that it’s the timing of a post, or the credibility of the author that makes or breaks a blog post’s ability to spread like wildfire. In reality, it’s the combination of these factors that intensify a blog post’s likelihood of being amplified in the blogosphere.

If content were king, then great posts wouldn’t go undiscovered every single day. If author credibility was the be all and end all, Chris Brogan would be able to post the lyrics to a Justin Bieber song on his blog and we’d all share it (Chris, please don’t test this…).

Highly shareable blog posts tend to create a compounding effect of sharing, whereby the initial people who read the post share it with their audiences, who then share it with their audiences, and so on. With this in mind, there are just two ways in that we can improve the odds of increasing a post’s ability to be shared:

Increase the rate of readers who share the post

Increase the initial number of readers

These two methods are obviously very broad and each contains a large number of sub-factors that can improve a blog post’s ability to be shared. Before we talk in more detail about what these sub-factors are, lets look at a very simple example:

Blog post A is shared by 1/100 readers

Blog post B is shared by 1/500 readers

In either case, you could increase the initial number of readers, which theoretically could create a compound sharing pattern. However, Blog post A will be five times more shareable than blog post B because there is a higher rate of sharing. Now lets look into how you can increase that rate.

A blog post’s ‘rate of sharing’ has a lot to do with the emotional reaction that is triggered in a reader that makes them want to pass the post along to friends. This ‘need to share’ emotion kicks in when a person feels a noticeable change in thought process or emotion.

What Impact’s a Blog Post’s Emotional Impact?

The uniqueness of the post

The timing of the post

The relevance of the post to the reader

The tone / style of the post

The angle & idea of the post

The intrigue created by the post’s headline

The level of trust and credibility of the post (blog design, author reputation, accuracy of statements, quality of writing).

In almost all cases, any blog post can be made more likely to be shared by making it more unique, better timed, more relevant to the probable audience, more trustworthy, more intriguing and better written.

However, a blog post can also be made more likely to be shared by increasing the scale of people initially reached.

What Impacts the Scale of Initial Exposure?

The connections & network the author / blog has established

The accessibility and ease of sharing the post

The budget available to reach a large audience through advertising

In other words, the larger the network of the author, the easier to share the post is, and the more money that is available to advertise the post to a large audience, the more likely a post is to be shared.

Measuring How Shareable Your Blog Post is:

There really is no way to do this accurately as ultimately it would require applying numbers to intensities of emotional reactions, but just for fun I decided to grade this post on each of the factors listed above:

Factor

Out of 10

Reason

Uniqueness

6

It’s a new methodology, but people have been talking about how to make a post more likely to go shareable for years.

Timing

5

There are a lot of bloggers looking to write shareable content at the moment so the timing is good, however, it would have been much more powerfully two or three years ago.

Relevance

9

This is a website read by bloggers looking to promote blog posts and learn blogging tips.

Tone

5

This is quite hard to self analyze, but I think the tone of the post is probably somewhere in-between good and bad J

Idea / Angle

6

I think the idea of analysing what makes things go shareable is always a good one!

Intrigue

4

The title of the post has some level of intrigue to it but it could be improved.

Trust

5

This is a well-trusted website

Network of Author

5

My network is not huge, but with a little bit of help it should be enough to get the ball rolling.

Ease of Sharing

8

This website is really well designed making it very easy to share content.

Budget Available

0

I do not intend to pay to advertise this post.

Total

51/100

A few things worth noting about this table: first of all, there is no weighting. Everything is scored out of 10 suggesting that every aspect has equal impact, which is not true. Also, the value of doing this table is not to find out exactly what number you end up with, but to spot the areas that you personally feel could do with improvement.

In this case, I felt that the headline of the post was the weakest aspect that would limit the blog post’s likelihood to be shared.

Try it. Write a blog post, grade it on how shareable it is and then see if you can add 25% or 50% extra ‘shareability’ to it using this grading technique.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Can you design things to be shared? Of course you can. While "sharing" is ultimately up to the end participant, it's up to the "designer" of the "thing" (this could be content, a platform, a product) to build the option and ability for sharing to occur. The media industry had no choice but to innovate in this space as my colleague Steve Rubel likes to refer to as "the war for page views". As, I've written recently—there are still untapped opportunities to enable and even kick-start social sharing behaviors.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Recently I had the privilege of hosting a stimulating panel at Pivot 2011 with Joe Fernandez, founder of Klout, Larry Levy, co-founder of Appinions and Elisa Camahort, co-founder of BlogHer. The idea of digital influence or how influence works within the social-digital space is on the mind of not only marketers, but policy makers and anyone in the business of communications and or influencing stakeholders to achieve desirable outcomes. While measuring digital influence and doing something with it is still in its infancy, I believe strongly that there is a large opportunity in understanding the dynamics of networks and how ideas, opinions, stories and narratives spread. For an example of this, take a look at the NYT cascade pilot which visualizes how a story spreads on Twitter.

Visualizations aside, our panel covered some interesting ground. Here are a few highlights:

Digital Influence & Real-World Influence, Related But Not The SameI asked Joe Fernadez of Klout if he thought there was a difference between digital influence and real-world influence and he mentioned something he called "the Warren Buffet problem" referring to an individual who is clearly influential (and whose influence extends into the digital world) though is not personally active when it comes to their own "social graph'. From my perspective we can measure Warren's influence online via mentions, sentiment, coverage, volume of conversation etc. But where we have to get better at is understanding the "nobodies" who help spread Warren's message. These are individuals (and there are a lot of them) who nobody ever heard of but are critical in spreading ideas. To use Edelman's language—Warren Buffet is an idea starter and there are thousands of individuals, properties and media outlets on the social web who act as his amplifiers. Some of them have more digital influence than others—but it all adds up.

Topical, Temporal & Identity Based Influence: Find Your A-list At That MomentLarry Levy of Appinions chimed in to state that they are working hard on the Warren Buffet problem by looking at the data. Topical influence means you start analyzing networks for influential data based on WHAT and not WHO (you can eventually end up with several WHO's and not just individuals. Temporal influence can indicate what person or digital property is influential in either a topic or related topic at that moment in time. These kinds of data sets through a wrench in the thinking that influencers can simply be "listed" and ranked. Elisa of BlogHer threw in a third consideration which is influence based on "identity" meaning if you can identify with the values and lifestyle of the person or media outlet you are exposed to that you are more likely to be influenced by what they tell you. An "A-list" of those who wield influence may be for a period of time or associated with specific topics and conversations—it may not always be the usual suspects.

Automation Desirable But Not Fully Realistic Yet As Larry noted, sentiment and things like language differences can be addressed by software and extracting data, but it takes people to look at the data and extract insights from it. And this is where I think the digital influence game is heading. Understanding what influences individuals or activates certain "nodes" on networks is really what this business will be about. It will also be about data. Accessible databases of not only who, but what and where (for example, being able to store and serve up high quality conversational data in a dashboard). Understanding who has influence when and how they use it will be critical to tapping a virtual army of advocates or on the flip-side having deep knowledge of "badvocates" or those who mobilize against you. Right now, no tool does this with great precision—but platforms such as Appinions, Sysomos, Radian 6, Peer Index, and many others are all vying to produce the most actionable data when it comes to understanding and acting upon digital influence. (Edelman also has Tweetlevel and Bloglevel tools which play in this space).

With platforms like Klout evolving their Perks program, digital influence will only rise in popularity due to the fact that social is shaping up to be the other side of the coin of search—and the two will influence each other. Since Google's Panda changes to the algorithm—it's not only number of outbound links that matter but the quality of those link sources. Influential entities often drive high quality links as well as volume, and this is why we're all going to be so focused on who is influencing digital conversations, when, where, how and why. On the social Web, active participants are all "somebodies" with some degree of influence—but understanding how to harness the right data and act upon it will likely take some time.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

I recently gave a talk, or more like a "therapy" session with Mullen's Chief Innovation Officer Edward Boches at the MIMA Summit in Minneapolis. A fantastic event populated by some of the most innovative companies in the world including Target, 3M and Best Buy. I have a bias when it comes to "innovation" that people tend to hyperfocus on what Google's Avinash Kaushik called "transformational" innovation. Ironically, a great example of transformational innovation would be Facebook which is transforming the Web from information to social interactions. But I focused my portion of the conversation on where I spend most of my time which is "incremental innovation" or smaller innovations which are not designed to dramatically transform, but can be effective ways of moving an organization in the right direction. Here are a few tips on how to innovate in spite of innovation.

Think Small: Fireflies vs. LightbulbInnovation doesn't always occur as the result of a single big idea (lightbulb) but can often times be the result of many little ideas. If we think about ideas, concepts or thoughts as fireflies vs. a giant lightbulb, you realize that fireflies need to be "caught" and placed in a jar. When collected, lots of fireflies can generate just as much light as a light bulb, but the trick is pulling out the right firefly or idea at the right time. Many good ideas were ahead of their time.

PrototypeComing from a design background, I stress the value of prototypes and define them broadly. Prototypes don't always need to be built out of code or material. A prototype needs to go beyond spoken or written word. It can be a visual, or process design or even a concept video. But it should be tangible, and it should communicate the value of the innovation.

Culture Matters More Than TechnologyEdward busted my chops a bit because I was using index cards to gather my thoughts vs. an iPad. I took that opportunity to stress that culture is more important than technology when it comes to innovation. I've seen companies with state of the art working spaces and those with just the basics in place and innovation happening at the latter. When it comes to pushing things even just a little, you don't need the latest and greatest tech but you do need a fire in the belly which is shared by your peers. Create A Coalition of the WillingRelated to the last point I referenced specific examples where I had seen better ideas come out of hallway conversations vs. "brainstorming sessions" where the most "creative" people are invited to the table. When trying to innovate, as a manager the most effective thing you can do is find, harness, and conspire with those who are willing to take up the cause with you. Innovation is a cause. It makes people uncomfortable and challenges them to stretch their own abilities.

Speak The Language of BusinessDuring our session, several individuals expressed the frustration of not being able to get "innovation funded". There are creative ways around the obstacle. On the professional services side, one way is to make a business case to a client which funds the initiative for you and gives them first dibs on an idea. On the corporate side, it can entail working up a business case and showing how much can be made or saved. Or there can be business cases built around things like visibility, marketing, press etc. Speaking the language of business means speaking in terms of business outcomes and not just the brilliance of the potential innovation. Do this and you'll be one step closer to finding a sponsor.

Meet A Need One of the things that I like about Kickstarter is that it meets a need that has previously been unmet. There are lots of people with projects in need of funding, and as it turns out there are also a great deal of people who feel good about supporting a project they believe in. The results is a marketplace where "buyer" and "seller" both benefit and exchange value. But prior to the platform, neither group likely knew that needed to work this way.

These are a few personal "values" that I try my best to consider when I work and hopefully push things forward. What are yours?

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

The following is a guest post from Jennifer Leggio, a Forbes social media blogger and raconteur. Find more about Jennifer here: http://about.me/mediaphyter

I'll be the first to admit that I once called out social influence measurement to be, as they scientifically say, a bunch of hooey. After the deluge of self-proclaimed social media "gurus" in 2007-2008, I couldn't help but be skeptical. These influence measurement tools started as simple lists of users by network size and eventually grew to services like HubSpot's fun yet vapid TweetGrader. So, it's not surprising that when Klout was first introduced, I met it with the same eye-rolling skepticism that I gave to the others. "This is likely fun," I said to myself. "But probably not much more."

I feared what a lot of other cynics feared - yet another "popularity" tool for the social media “guru” squads to tout their own awesomeness. Over several months I watched people take advantage of the perks and post about their scores until curiosity got the best of me. Sure, I'll admit that it was fun to go in and see how my score would shift based on how often (or not) I used a social network. And, I did enjoy my mockery of Klout's ill-fitted influence topics (for example, Klout currently believes I am influential about oatmeal. I'm awaiting an offer from Quaker any day now, but I digress…). However, that does not mean that influence measurement tools are without merit, especially in today’s booming social business landscape. So, the question becomes: Was I wrong to be cynical or was I right to want them to do more? The answer is an ambiguous “yes.”

Remember the whole ROI and social media debacle? Sure you do, it’s still going. Companies were clamoring for proof of ROI for their social business investment, while the same merry band of social media “gurus” screamed, "What? Can't hear you! Social media is intangible!"

What does this have to do with influence measurement? Just hang in a bit longer. The foundation underneath both the influence and ROI debates is fear. In the ROI debate, people who truly didn't understand social business were trying to justify their existences. A common thread might be, "You can't measure this, but look at how many LIKES we got today?" and then, immediately cue the knees knocking and the teeth chattering. With influence measurement, you have the same fear. A common thread here might be, "You can't measure influence. Klout says my score is only 30, but really, I am way more popular because I go to tweet-ups." Narcissism notwithstanding, remove the fear and we can shine a spotlight on an activity that's not only growing in popularity because people can get free stuff, but because companies are starting to demand it, much like they started to demand social media ROI.

Because so many companies want to see results for their output and the right kind of influenced action, social media marketers who ignore influence measurement will do so at their own peril. The days of “we got 100 random retweets!” as a milestone are, thankfully, gone. Don’t agree? I liken this to a good public relations strategy. In the olden days of PR, any news coverage could be considered helpful. If Bob’s News Magazine Weekly Times Post ran a direct duplicate of a press release, some PR folks might’ve cheered. PR agencies would pack clip books full of these types of posts. The days of “we got 100 random stories!” are gone. Companies want targeted, meaningful, third party discussions of their wares in the media. The same goes for social. And unlike publications where circulation and readership (though sometimes debatable metrics in their own right) dictate reach, influencers don’t come with their own numbers. Services like Klout and Sulia and others exist to help make sense of all of the madness.

All of this said, there are some critical considerations:

1) Topical Influence – There is no “general” influencer. While measurement is helpful to companies, not any ol’ influencer will do. If Quaker is going to push a new flavor of oatmeal then, according to Klout, I am their gal. While my overall score might be decent and I am influential on breakfast choices, this doesn’t mean that I should be targeted for holiday gift guides (pet peeve alert). Just as you would with a reporter, target the ones who have the audience that give a hoot about what you’re selling.

2) Immature Market – The influence measurement market is still bouncing around in its jumper swing. Much like any market in its infancy, it needs time to grow and improve. Klout and Sulia are moving quickly toward more accurate topical influence but they aren’t there yet. And, that doesn’t mean they can’t be undone by a newcomer with a better, or even simply better marketed, offering (case-in-point: Groupon). For example, Kred has recently popped up, and they tout the ability to determine where you fit into a range of communities (aka topical influence). The challenge here is that they base a lot of this on Twitter bios (mine says hockey, but I am not influential there) and they also share how scores were determined, so the bumbling group of social media “gurus” could try to game it. Is Kred the company to knock Klout from its pedestal? I have no idea. However, we need to give Klout, Kred, Sulia and others time to mature this market the way that we gave social networks time to grow into business vehicles.

3. Influencers Are a Rascally Bunch - They vary by industry and preference. It’s important to note that an influencer doesn’t need to be the most popular kid at camp. He or she only needs to be influential to a focused audience (aka topical influencers). And, right or wrong, influencers can be bought. Algorithms can’t always determine what is, for example, a sponsored tweet versus a heartfelt one. These can work in certain situations, but this is a critical consideration when weighing influence targets for promotions or outreach.

4. Size is Not Everything - It’s been debunked over and over, but I’ll say it again. A network size does not always indicate the right level of influence. Influence inspires a new type of action, and that action is harder to measure beyond the initial click. Relationships are much more critical to influence measurement than actual network size. Influence measurement needs become more dynamic and contextual to truly help us get past this “more followers equals more amazing!” mindset. Again, it’s a young market, and in time size will become less relevant, and context will become more critical.

Here’s where I tell you in a few sentences what I just rambled about above: influence measurement, in all of its grand imperfection, is not going anywhere. It will improve, it will become more critical, and your clients or executives are soon going to demand it. Rather than laughing it off or denying it based on fear, start playing around with it, determine the good pieces and how you can take those bits and feed them into a true social business strategy. If not, the merry band of social media “gurus” awaits, and I hear that their membership requirements aren’t discerning at all.

Monday, October 03, 2011

You should watch this video from Wallgreen's Adam Kmiec because he makes a lot of great points about the hype of social and the reality check which is needed in the industry. I applaud him for stressing this. I also think he might be forgetting something I feel is really important. Poking is just as important as poking holes. Perhaps even more so.

I've watched Adam through the years and it was his "poking around" that led to his proficiency in social media. Same for Shiv Singh who leads social at Pepsi beverages. Before then he was sort of a lone voice at digital agency Razorfish trying to move that firm into the social era. Both Shiv and Adam (like myself) benefited from curiosity, digging and poking. We all made huge attempts to understand social in the context of business.

When I started blogging in 2006, at Digitas—my co-workers thought I was a little nuts. When I tried to convince them that Twitter would alter how we communicate (in 2007), they looked at me with puzzled expressions. Adam goes on to poke holes in one of social media's more innovative examples—Dell and their social media command center. But clearly expresses his interest in doing something similar for Walgreens. I would estimate that if Dell invited him to Austin, that he'd jump at the opportunity and within the year you'd see a headline citing Walgreen's roving social command center (inspired by Dell).

Here's my point: There's value to poking holes in any inflated industry. There's also value to simply poking. Adam did it and it served him well. Poking holes can serve a purpose—it can expose flaws in any area. But not at the expense of poking, digging, experimenting, and trying. Several years ago there was a market for teachers in this area and in principal, I'd agree with Adam that there are indeed myths in need of busting—some teachers have overreached. But today, the market demand is for myth busting. It makes for a good story.

In either scenario, I believe in one fundamental truth which I learned in design school. "Be true to your work and your work will be true to you". For me, this transcends all things social and has instilled my appreciation of those who "poke".

Friday, September 30, 2011

Not long ago, I found myself talking with several clients about a trend I felt would truly impact their business. Social Sharing. There's no brilliance to identifying this as a meaningful trend, we see social sharing everywhere. In the real world and most recently on networks as people not only share what they are doing, but what they are reading, listening to, and even purchasing.

I've made suggestions multiple times to whoever would listen that they should take another look at their Website and integrate social sharing (beyond content and more toward commerce). For example if you are even considering buying a product, you should be able to tell your friends about it. If you booked a vacation or a hotel room with a view—same thing. If you recommend a product or service you should be able to broadcast that across your entire social network (and not just one) directly from the site.

Social networks have turned people into bragging machines. It's not the most appealing human trait, but spend time on them and this is a significant portion of how people share. We want others to know when we do something that makes us feel good. So why don't we see more of this integration in transactional Web experiences? See Sears for example:

In this example, Sears allows a participant to share products they are interested on Facebook. They can also do reviews of products and share those. The benefit for Sears is a very potent form of "social marketing" in that they get their product right into the main feed of a user and their friends/connections are likely to see it. It's more word of mouth than it is advertising.

So why aren't there more examples like this across the Web from major brands? It takes several "departments" to make something like this happen. Here are a few:

LegalITMarketingSocial

It also takes the commitment of a senior leader within an organization to say "go make this happen". In nearly every conversation I find myself in with professionals in the industry, the struggle to define "social ROI" (return on investment) becomes a roadblock to innovation.

If you really want to connect the dots between social integration and purchase intent then please steal this idea and integrate social sharing to your products and services on your sites. Figure out how to do it and make it happen. And figure out how to track the links back to your site. You'll be one step closer to solving the "ROI" question in social media social business integration. Have you seen any great examples from big brands here? Share in the comments.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

I'm in the middle of customizing my new Facebook page featuring the new Timeline layout. In the process, I kept thinking that something felt familiar about it. Then, I remembered this Superbowl ad from Google.

It's a great ad because it's about life and it's about being human. It's about our connections and experiences. Ironically, with Timeline, Facebook succeeded on the promise that Google made in that ad. It's still a great ad and it still applies to Google, but I have to wonder of the developers and designers at Facebook had it in mind as they worked on Timeline in their effort to beat Google on Web domination. It's Possible. Meanwhile, Timeline is pretty powerful. Your life in digital.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Summer is over and Fall is officially into gear (boy is it ever). I actually spent a good part of the summer focusing on a local client and welcomed a little less travel. But now that things are back in swing, well it's time to shake things up a little. Here are a few places I'll be speaking at over the next few months.

New York: Mashable Social Good SummitThanks to the folks in our digital health practice, I get to share the the same stage with folks like Lance Armstrong, Geena Davis and Ted Turner. I'll only be up there briefly, but will be sharing some initial finding's from Edelman's upcoming Digital Health Barometer.

Minneapolis: MIMA Summit In addition to speakers like Chris Anderson and Avinaush Kaushik, Edelman Digital's own Chuck Hemann will be joining some of the great minds in technology and business at the MIMA Summit. I'll be joining forces with Mullen's Edward Boches where we plan on mixing things up with an "un-panel" or group therapy for would be innovators. We promise it will be fun.

New York: PivotPivot, guided by Brian Solis and featuring some of the brightest minds in the business including Ford's Scott Monty,Charlene Li, and Nestle's Pete Blackshaw should not dissapoint. I'll be discussing the new influencers and why it matters in media and business. ScottsDale: Constellation's Connected Enterprise Thrown by Constellation's notable luminaries such as Ray Wang, and featuring compelling speakers such as John Hagel (Power of Pull) and Doc Searls (Cluetrain Manifesto), I'll be discussing the role of "design" in building a social business.Los Angeles: Blogworld The industry's best kept secret is Blogworld. It has more substance than SXSW and networking which is smaller, perhaps more focused but just as good. I'll be discussing what Social Business Planning is and how it can be put into action. Look forward to speaking along side a roster that includes friends Ann Handley, CC Chapman, Jason Falls and Liz Strauss just to name a few.

Phew. I need a vacation already. Hope to see you at any of these events and as usual, be sure to say hello.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

It could not have been a more perfect day in Chicago—clear blue skies and crisp but sunny. I had a big presentation to give at a client, so as I got ready in the morning my thoughts were focused on that. For whatever reason that morning, we had our television on and I caught the news of a plane crashing into one of the Towers at the world trade center. I remember seeing some of the footage of the fire and smoke then immediately leaving so I would not be late for my meeting. The story was just beginning to break at this point and I never even considered it being a passenger airliner.

Since it was so nice out, I decided to ride my motorcycle to the meeting site (about 30 minutes from our home) and was essentially cut off from the rest of the world and the developments. By the time I had gotten into the clients office, everyone was talking about the events unfolding and by this time, the second tower had been hit. We had a screen up and were watching the live footage.

But, a decision was made to proceed with the meeting and the presentation. I delivered my part of it as best I could and clearly minds were elsewhere. We finished the meeting early and immediately brought the screen back up with the live coverage. I'll never forget this moment. The world trade center or "twin towers" as I called them growing up were GONE. I kept thinking, where are they??

I called my wife immediately but could not get through to any of my family in New York, so I rode back home and watched in horror as the day unfolded. Throughout the day I remember looking over at our nine month old baby boy and wondering what kind of world we had brought him into.

Fortunately none of my immediate family who worked in New York were hurt but we all know families and friends of families that were. Recently, I was walking past my high-school where I grew up on Long Island and noticed a street sign named after someone who was in one of the towers. He had graduated one year after I did.

So, that's where I was. I will never forget the day—or those directly affected.

What is Location-Based Marketing? While an official definition doesn't yet exist for location-based marketing, we (Mike and Aaron) like to explain it as the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR and Gowalla to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals. These services are mostly available on smart phones (mobile phones that are web and GPS enabled) and allow users to "check in" to a physical location such as a restaurant, bar, print shop or dentist's office. Some of these services allow the businesses to reward their customers for checking in with special discounts, prizes, experiences and recognition.

Because more and more people are starting to use smart phones, it's becoming easier for software and application developers to take advantage of knowing within a tight radius, where someone is assuming that "someone" doesn't mind revealing their current location. The key here is for marketers and small business owners to provide enough value (discounts, prizes, recognition etc.) for customers to want to check in so that customers will share their data with them. Over time, marketers and business owners can leverage this rich data (age, sex, past check-in behavior, frequency of checking in, etc.). Even better, if the location is cool enough or the offer compelling enough, marketers and business owners can count on their customers sharing their "check ins" with their networks on places like Facebook, Twitter and Google +.

How Does a Business Get Started with a Location-Based Marketing Campaign?Knowing that people like lists, we've put together a straightforward blueprint for companies to help them think about how they might go about building a location-based marketing campaign. This isn't everything you need to know, it's a good primer for getting started. If you're really interested in digging in, we hear there is a good book to help you get started (shameless plug, we know).

Set goals: Are you looking to drive foot traffic? Loyalty? Sales? Engagement? Think about how to measure this.

Claim your location: simply put, search for your business across the top LBS (foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and SCVNGR) and put a "claim" in on your business's location(s). In most cases, this is a ten minute process. While you're at it, make sure you take a look at your location on Google Places.

Pick a service (or two) to support: Find 1-2 services to use (hint: if you’re in the travel and entertainment industry, Gowalla is a great choice). One way to decide which service(s) are right for you is to see how active your customers are across each service.

Reach out to your Influencers: Find out who your influencers are (the mayor, ambassador or the person at the top of your leader board is usually a good place to start) and get to know them. Heck, invite them in for coffee, lunch, a wine tasting.

Pick a great offer: Note that “great” doesn’t equal “expensive.” Sometimes, a sign in your store/venue honoring the “mayor” might be enough. My co-author, Mike Schneider, and I have what we call the “Ben & Jerry’s Rule” named after one of the first successful campaigns ever to roll out on foursquare. They offered 3 scoops of ice cream for $3 for everyone that checked in (cost for 3 scoops is normally $5.50). And even better, the mayor got a free extra scoop.

Measure, refine and optimize: This one is pretty straightforward. Have a plan and execute against it.

Gamification FTW: Don’t be afraid to leverage the “game dynamics” of some of these platforms as appropriate. For instance, on SCNVGR, you might give extra points for a picture with the store manager. Or if you sell coffee, a bonus for the best drink recommendation.

Let people know about your campaign: Remember to let people know about your program by putting up signs, telling them in your newsletter, including a mention on your “on hold” music, etc.

Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize: This means that if you are going to run a location based marketing campaign, train your employees. Train yourself. And make sure you have whatever it is that you’re promising. Not operationalizing is where many companies fall down.

Try out an API: If you are tech savvy (or have some tech savvy developers), try experimenting with some of the APIs these location based platform providers make available for free. You can jazz up your website or your mobile app.

Where is Location Based Marketing Headed?

We're seeing a lot of interesting developments in the space. The over exaggerated death of Facebook Places signals something that we have had our eyes on for a while. The audience that knows about and understands checking in its current form is a subset of highly technical (geeky) early adopters, gamers and social networking dynamos. These folks spend money, they're loud and they are worth activating, but that behavior on its own is not going to pay off the true value of location. Instead, there are other ways for consumers to use and express their location to get value.

Passive Checking In / Precision: Reward cards like Tasti-D-Lite's check people in automatically using the foursquare API, but companies like Shopkick are experimenting with sound wave emitters that can track people to specific aisles of a store and test whether they can get people to spend with targeted offers, but also see if they can get them to change behavior. I remember proposing similar technology to a pharma client which did the same using RFID trackers. They thought this was too icky, but Shopkick, according to some chats I've had with Forrester has 2.5 million users and 40% are active. That is huge and represents a seriously amazing opportunity to get to shoppers and interact with / influence them at decision point.

Intent / Future: Applications like Forecast, Plancast and Ditto have people telling where they are going to be. This represents a huge opportunity for merchants to use structured data to serve a group of people who need their services, or to attempt to change their intended behavior. The first ones into the pool get the advantage and I bet they get it at almost zero cost.

In a status or meta data: Facebook, like Google+ is using location as a feature and it's actually pretty brilliant because they are getting more than just a check in. They're getting personal and professional expressions wrapped around a location. The problem is that the data is still highly unstructured and difficult to analyze, but if anyone can figure it out, it's Google. Look for them to do cool things with the location data that you provide to Google+. I see recommendations based on what your friends or others like you like without you having to answer many questions.

Recommendation Engines:Bizzy and WHERE are the leaders in this category. Bizzy recently integrated with foursquare so they can pull in your locations and add places you have been to their recommendation technology. They also have a concept of "checking out" [BTW are the shenanigans at techcrunch wacky or what? start another blog Mike] where you rate your experience in a structured manner. They also just released a reminder notification that pings you 60 minutes after you check-in on foursquare to remind you to check out on Bizzy.

At Point of Sale: Screw checking in, just pay. Technologies like The LevelUp are capturing your location, but they aren't broadcasting it to anyone (yet). Instead they're quietly building a future-forward loyalty, cross merchant loyalty program that will have one of the most interesting sets of data anyone has seen. Look for them to possibly merge with SCVNGR at some point and connect the social aspects. For now, though, we'll take one step mobile payments and behind-the-scenes discounts on anything we want. You can leave your wallet at home!

Hopefully we've piqued your interest in location-based marketing. If you have any questions, please ask away in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

As a public relations firm, we are always looking to engage with key audiences and share ideas though unique avenues. Recently, we began doing this through SlideShare. Think of it as YouTube for documents: SlideShare offers us a platform for listening and discussing what matters most to our work, our clients, and the industries and communities we participate in.

As communicators creating new content moving forward, we keep in mind the below five best practices for creating and sharing effective content on SlideShare:

1. Make It Visual

Some of the most viewed and shared presentations on Slideshare go beyond bullet points and extensive copy in favor of highly visual presentations that communicate ideas quickly and in an engaging fashion. Presentations can be made more visual by leveraging imagery from sources such as Flickr pending that a user has a Creative Commons license stating that the work is free to use pending attribution to the creator. Presentations that use info graphics, charts and information design instead of text-based data points also tend to do well and shared more often.

2. Have a Definitive POV

POVs and perspectives distributed on Slideshare must be definitive, ownable and expressed in a compelling way. In other words, the creator of the content needs to be opinionated and the creation must communicate these opinions in clear and memorable ways. Models and case studies should be used to help communicate and support ideas, theories and perspectives.

3. Share What You Know (and Make It Interesting)

Slideshare’s ecosystem rewards individuals and brands if they openly share knowledge in compelling ways. Pick topics that have strong communities around them and then produce a deck that tells a story about what you know and teaches the reader something. Focusing on both specialized content catered to a specific audience targets the presentation and increases the odds of it getting circulated. Good writing, images and storytelling techniques are what will make the knowledge compelling.

4. Include Others

Just like other forms of social media, putting the spotlight on others is an effective tactic in SlideShare. The inclusion of others and their opinions opens up the content to their networks and puts the author of the presentation in the position of curator. This combination creates both value and increases the odds of the slideshow getting circulated.

5. Give Your Presentation A Theme

Memorable presentations sometimes break the mold a bit and feature custom themes in the form of a concept, a visual language or even the voice of the presentation. Typically themes are most effective when all three work together. Themes help make the content more interesting, relevant and enjoyable.

This week Edelman launched our official Edelman SlideShare Network to help share more presentations, documents and content with the world through SlideShare’s growing community. Within the network, specific channels are tailored to various Edelman content categories; Edelman Showcase – provides a look at client programs from our practices; Edelman Talks – serves as the hub for presentations from conferences and speaking engagements; Edelman Insights – acts as the home for all Edelman IP; and Edelman Etc. – offers an eclectic outlet for Edelman employees to share their interests and passions. Edelman Digital even uses Slideshare to showcase its portfolio which lives both on Slideshare and Edelmandigital.com. Slideshare combined with great content and presentations gives communicators the ability to make their content more compelling, portable and sharable.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

For further proof that "social business" is coming of age, Altimeter recently conducted some research (both quantitative and qualitative) of enterprise grade organizations (1000 or more employees). The report focuses on readiness for crisis scenarios, but includes several best practices and findings which illustrate how organizations need to structure themselves for social business. Below is a breakdown of a few findings which stood out to me (noted in italics), along with some thoughts as to what this could potentially mean for you and your organization:

Finding: Baseline governance and reinforcement enables employees to professionally participate."Of the 144 companies we surveyed, all 18 Advanced companies allow rank-and-file employees to use social media professionally (Figure 1.2). However, Advanced companies also educate and provide guardrails so that employees know how to participate in a safe and consistent manner."

ImplicationsIf you consider your organization to be advanced in leveraging social media for business but have not provided education, guidelines or rules of engagement for your employees, then you may not be as advanced as you think. Guidance for a broader employee base can come in the form of training, or establishing recommended rules of engagement and of course a policy. These are only some of the basics and serve different purposes. For example, the rules of engagement scenario map (below) outlines recommended actions against specific scenarios and is not the same thing as an enterprise wide policy. Organizations with less experience in scaling social are likely following a more ad hoc approach.

Example: Scenario map outlining rules of engagement for community management

Finding: Enterprise-wide response processes provide rapid customer engagement."Companies are struggling to keep up with a growing volume of conversations – we found that enterprise-class corporations already average 178 corporate-owned social media accounts. As workflow across the enterprise becomes more complicated, consistency and efficiency decrease, while risks increase."

ImplicationsFor large organizations who wish to increase their proficiency in leveraging social media for business, this translates to having not only actionable response plans in place but also the listening structure and workflow. Implications here include putting some sort of "social business intelligence" system in place which allows the right people in your organization to detect and distribute intelligence to the right people so it can be acted upon. (see below)

Finding: A dedicated and shared central hub, often named the “Center of Excellence,” provides leadership."Increased consumer adoption and low technological barriers encourage corporate stakeholders to deploy social media on their own, with or without formal approval. In our survey, we found that as many as 13 different business units across the enterprise engage in customer-facing social media efforts"

ImplicationsIncreasingly, large organizations are adopting a coordinated approach to managing social efforts (Altimeter's report cites Adobe as an example, *Edelman client) however, COE's must be assembled with care. Personal experience working with organizations that implement a Center of Excellence highlights the tension between regional autonomy and corporate desire for more consistency. A "COE" must be carefully planned and attached to the right committees and regional representatives in order for them to reach their full potential.

Altimeter's report does an excellent job of highlighting a more macro trend—that social media is increasingly integrating into organizations and in the process presents numerous challenges and opportunities. It also highlights the fact that large organizations display a spectrum when it comes to levels of readiness The report goes on to highlight some of those specific challenges and opportunities in the area of crisis management. I highly recommend reviewing it in detail. (Note: Edelman Digital colleague Michael Brito was sourced in the study).

Monday, July 25, 2011

I've been deeply immersed in Google Plus for the last week or so, not only following what's being said about the service but actually using it, kicking the tires and making observations along the way. For what it's worth, I think Google Plus has an incredible amount of potential for a number of reasons. Here's a few thoughts or more accurately opinions. Everyone has a take, so the only thing can offer here is that I've had these thoughts in my head while using the service but wanted to give it some time before putting it into writing.

1. Google Plus Isn't A Social Network, It's A Social LayerGoogle Plus looks like a social network and feels like a social network but I don't think that's where all of this is going. What Google has been successful in doing is creating the beginnings of what I think will become a social layer across the Google/Web ecosystem. The brilliance of their strategy is that the experience is good and seems designed for users craving a solution that takes aspects from Twitter, Tumblr and adds some of the familiarity of Facebook resulting in a promising social experience which lets users broadcast in public or share and connect selectively. If Google can scale and refine what's making G+ appealing to early adopters, they will be well on their way to showing the rest of the world what a social layer looks like (and I'm looking forward to watching this unfold).

2. Google Plus Isn't A Facebook Killer And Doesn't Need To BeThe media and pundits will continue to ask the question of Google taking Facebook out. I am fairly confident that average social "consumers" (think your mom or non industry friends) will not be leaving Facebook any time soon. However, this doesn't mean G+ will not become a significant force in media and other areas--I believe it will because it offers enough compelling connectivity, social features and content to siphon attention away from multiple networks/communication platforms including Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Posterous, E-mail etc. As my colleague Steve Rubel points out, time and attention are finite. The more time and attention G+ gets from users and publishers, the more it takes away from all others. In my opinion, Google plus will take away enough time and attention for other networks to feel its effect and influence.

3. Journalists, Public Relations Professionals & The Media Will Eventually Flock To G+Facebook knows that they need to appeal to journalists and media professionals in order to become an even more influential network. Currently, journalists favor Twitter over Facebook due to it's real time and open nature. Google Plus combines these aspects of Twitter with a way to organize "sources" and information organically. I believe this is where Facebook will feel Google plus most as media entities begin to incorporate the service into their routines. I don't see Facebook being structured as well for things like scanning headlines and leveraging journalists as personalities.

4. Businesses With Employee "Ambassador" Models Will Activate & Deploy ThemCall them community managers, evangelists, or corporate ambassadors, many business models leverage employees as public agents to educate, engage and activate advocacy amongst their customers. Google Plus has come out swinging strong with features such as circles which makes managing multiple groups of connections effective (something Facebook or Twitter doesn't do well). For example, a community manager who only wants to communicate or give their best content or news away to a their most engaged or high value members can customize different content to different groups. Naturally, many company "ambassadors" will organically begin cultivating their network, but the real opportunity lies with a coordinated deployment.

5. Big And Small Business Gets A Second Chance With Google+Google Plus offers not only users, but business and brands a second chance at getting in while the infrastructure is still being put in place. Though Google has not rolled out brand pages (or pages for non human entities), companies of all shapes and sizes who may have fumbled their efforts on Facebook, Twitter etc for a variety of reasons will have a second chance at setting up their "embassies" on Google Plus with some planning in place and a host of learnings to draw from efforts on previous networks.

Google Plus is no Empire Avenue or Quora—it’s the company’s arguably successful attempt at a social layer, which will likely integrate across other verticals and intersect with search. Personally, I think it could be a serious game changer for the reasons I’ve listed in this piece. Challenges for both individuals and brands will remain investment, risk, strategy and getting up to speed on this ecosystem in real time. My advice is to get the right people in your organization focused on determining if this space will affect your industry. At minimal, pay close attention to it. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want to break new ground—consider investing in all things Google as they weave their social layer across their considerable ecosystem.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

In oversimplified terms, SEO to the average company is a process of performing research into the words people are using when searching or discussing online. Company X then refines the copy and metadata on their site to match the vernacular people are using to improve their relevance in search result rankings. Of course this is a very simplified description. For more information click here (PDF).

In our model, we first perform that initial search and social conversation audit to see what people are asking for or discussing but then compare the results to a company’s public digital assets such as videos, images and documents to see if they are properly aligned with the vernacular people use for search and easily shared between people socially.

In short, a digital asset that is searchable AND sharable is more relevant. Theoretically, the net result looks something like a huge spider, spreading and maximizing the find-ability and share-ability of a client’s materials so they organically work much harder for you.

What are your thoughts on the future of search – do you have a content optimization plan for your business?

Thursday, July 14, 2011

For a clue to social media's future, we need not look much further than Washington. On the one hand, you have "Weinergate," former NY Senator Anthony Weiner's Twitter fiasco, which was essentially user error. He failed to negotiate the thin line between digital communication and social communication, between private and public.

On the other hand you have President Obama's announcement that he will do his own Tweeting. I'm fairly confident that while Obama may be the one that hits the "Tweet" button, it's highly unlikely that his tweets will go out into the wild without planning and, for the lack of a better word, design. He's no Anthony Weiner.

These two events signal the shift that's coming. The age of social media as something spontaneous that reflects how we behave in the real world (the Weiner approach) is coming to an end. We are entering an age of social business: a purposeful, planned, orchestrated, and integrated way of doing business in a social context which may feel personal to the outside world but combine complexities internally within organizations that will need navigating. As further evidence to the shift, one can look to technology for yet another clue.

Over the past several years, forward-thinking companies have begun to understand the value of monitoring conversations, so they have purchased software licenses from platforms like Radian 6. Recently, Enterprise software behemoth Salesforce acquired the startup, sending the signal that listening to social conversations is only one slice of the bigger pie for business. The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing "social". If the next phase of social media is operating as a scalable social organization or business, then expect to see an explosion of activity in the following areas:

Organizational Design: While social media is focused on parts of an organization or business where communications and marketing demand social media tactics, a social business is redesigned as it moves through key phases of its evolution. All business functions have to undergo several iterations of change. Looking at your organization from a social business lens means looking at it more holistically. For further proof here, we can look to Facebook, where business and brand pages deal not only with customer "likes" but also with complaints and attacks from activist groups such as Greenpeace. Corporate Facebook pages are great examples of the need for marketing, PR, customer service, and even HR to all figure out how to work together because users on Facebook don't make the distinction behind which department is running what. To them, a company page represents all departments.

Social Business Intelligence: The rise of social media led to a gold rush in technology solutions, which allowed organizations to eavesdrop on conversations happening across multiple social ecosystems and digital public spaces such as the blogosphere, message boards, and Facebook. Organizations that have become accustomed to listening in on conversations are now positioned to take the next step and convert listening into organization-wide business intelligence. Dell, for example, has a "social command center", a baby step in the emerging area of social intelligence. Socially intelligent organizations will not only be able to adapt to conditions in their environment, but they will eventually be able to predict and plan for future scenarios.

Cultures of Collaboration, Co-Creation & Shared Value: Perhaps the most significant recent business case, which illustrates the business side of social, comes from a notoriously anti-social brand. When Apple first designed the iPhone, it did not plan for phones to be jailbroken and applications to be developed ad hoc, but that's what happened. The App Store was born by an early understanding that certain aspects were out of Apple's control and therefore a system needed to be planned and designed if Apple were to extract value in the long run. The end result is what's commonly known in the business world as an ecosystem in which value is entered into it and extracted by multiple stakeholders for mutual gain. An ecosystem, by definition, is sustainable.

The tenuous relationship between social media and social business represents a chasm that must be bridged. On one hand, the public desires authentic interactions in social spaces from real people. There is now an expectation for real-time response. On the other, a business or organization requires a system to be in place that coordinates activities. In short, it means knowing that Obama is pressing the Tweet button at times, but making sure he's not Tweeting anything inappropriate. The shift to come is moving from a focus on external media consumption to the internalization and business integration of what it means to become social or connected. Organizations that integrate social into how they do business will embrace social as a layer that's woven into the fabric of each business function over time. In the era of social business, external media will always play a role, but it will be the tip of the iceberg.

Monday, July 11, 2011

I finally found time to cash in on one of my Google+ invites after taking a much needed vacation. My initial assessment? Google has actually figured out how humans work, so mark Google+ as one to watch and ignore the pundits that are telling you it's no threat to Facebook. The real threat from Google is they have finally shown evidence that they understand social and human beings by association. The whole Google+ experience while far from perfect offers proof of this—specifically with its "circles" feature. Much like the diagram above I did several years ago, Google+ offers participants to the network "circles" where they can categorize their connections ranging from friends, to family, acquaintances, public etc.

To many users of various social networks, this comes as welcome addition to those managing multiple spheres of connections and wish to interact with them differently vs. using a broad brush for everything. Google+ has tons of potential despite the saturation of social networks out there for one reason. They're Google. And search is complimentary to social. When they connect these two pieces together (and they will) look out.

Google+ is one to watch because they've demonstrated that they are beginning to understand social and human drivers. Stay tuned for more...

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Colleague Steve Rubel and I were recently invited to participate in a very cool initiative coordinated by Eloqua‘s Joe Chernov and Jess3 – a social media playbook for industry professionals dubbed the “Social Media ProBook.” In it, you’ll find valuable perspectives from a variety of practitioners ranging from Ford’s Scott Monty, to Citi’s Frank Eliason, and HP’s Liz Philips among many others (disclaimer, HP is an Edelman client). My contribution was on a topic I feel will be of increasing importance to those of us deep in the trenches of social business integration and measuring results. Below is the full contribution, and I highly recommend that you browse through the ProBook and share it with others. It’s got some great, timely information on how to take social business to the next level within your organization.

Do You Believe In Life After Likes? Measuring Social Business.

Anyone telling you that they have the measurement and ROI (Return On Investment) issue solved in regards to social media is exaggerating at best. While I don’t have enough space here to dive as deeply into this topic as I could, there are a few specific points I would like to emphasize. But first, let’s do some level-setting — conversations around measuring results must move beyond fixating on single metrics such as “likes” fueled by the Facebook ecosystem. While they may be a desirable indicator of success, “likes” are one of many metrics, and social business leaders must take a step back to look at the big picture before putting all your social eggs into one big integrated basket. A great starting point when digging into measurement is to organize your efforts into one of the following outcomes: behavioral change and economic impact.

Behavior Change

Behavior change can be looked at from multiple perspectives. For example, if a large enterprise has determined that X amount of dollars can be saved annually if employees shift their behavior from A to B, then success can be measured by the percentage of shifts in the behavior from undesirable to desirable (over time). Likewise, on the public front, if a business finds itself in a crisis scenario and needs to “stop the bleeding,” it needs to trigger a shift in actions (such as fewer negative postings in public and more neutral or positive expressions, often referred to as “sentiment”) to help reverse opinions. From a marketing perspective, prompting desirable behaviors is also linked to influencing thought and opinion. Ratings, reviews and recommendations of products / services all serve as significant purchase indicators. Apply a social lens to these behavioral indicators (for example, sharing an opinion via a social network) and you can begin to frame up outcomes, which involve thought and action.

Economic Impact

Economic impact attaches a value — revenue generated or money saved — on a business initiative. It should not be confused with metrics. Returning to the crisis scenario, a business that has successfully averted or subdued a crisis (leveraging social media) can reference benchmarks from similar situations faced by other companies or their own estimations to evaluate how much money the business saved through taking appropriate action. Sales is of course the obvious financial outcome, however even if tracking sales via social activities is elevated to a science, companies must also consider how much more or less it might have taken to achieve similar results using other methods (such as traditional media purchasing). In areas such as human resources, economic impact can be measured in quality and efficiencies (such as recruiting better candidates in less time leveraging social networks). In customer service, it could spending less on call centers because customer advocates are helping others before they ever have a chance to pick up the phone. Simply put, economic impact is money the organization saves or makes integrating social initiatives into the business.

Construct A Measurement Framework

Measuring social business success begins with constructing a measurement framework, which maps to your objectives to the appropriate strategy. A measurement framework aligns KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) with criteria to measure against. For example, if your KPI is “visibility,” your framework should be structured around relevant, measurable metrics, such as page rank in search engines or designated networks. “Acquisition” could also be another KPI, which can be measured by fans and followers. A desired outcome can be ownership of a conversation or subject matter. In this case measuring against a KPI such as “authority” could include metrics like shares, media mentions, links, likes, embeds, traffic, and comments. Some of these metrics can be aggregated into things such as “share of voice” or the approximation of how relevant you may be to conversations. A measurement framework based on applicable KPI’s can be applied to different facets of social business — for example separate ones can be developed for customer service, marketing, sales, R&D, etc. There are metrics which can be shared across all of these functions, but a framework should go deep in identifying what needs to be measured and where (what social properties). The framework also should be flexible enough to change as new data is introduced.

Analyze For Meaning

The less frequently discussed aspect of social measurement is effort, or the time it takes to derive meaning from numbers, data and fluctuations in metrics. A “measurement dashboard” satisfies the need for program architects to view all types of information at a glance, but while it offers up valuable information on that “what,” a dashboard seldom tells us “why.” Human intervention is needed to determine why there might be an increase in re-tweets around one form of communication vs. another. Dashboards can tell us what times of the day users may be more and less active, but the insights we derive from them requires processing that transcends the display of information

Measure What Matters

Measurement initiatives must begin with serious consideration of the desired outcomes. On the behavioral front, raising awareness on an issue or a successful adoption rate of a platform can be sought after outcomes. Advocacy can be another powerful outcome for any organization. On the economic impact front the outcomes should be focused on determining if money was actually made or saved. The metrics you then choose to analyze and report against align against these outcomes from the beginning. Tracking irrelevant metrics is like playing a game with numbers instead of meeting your business objectives. Start your measurement initiatives with your goals, objectives and outcomes and work your way backwards toward what should be measured. Take a holistic approach and avoid the temptation to focus solely on metrics that demonstrate only short-term gain. Be prepared to update your approach and framework as your social business objectives evolve. And, most importantly, get ready for life after likes —because it’s coming soon to a business near you.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

If you work in either an agency, consultancy or professional services firm, then you've likely seen an article or five over the past few years making the case for agencies to act more like start-ups. The logic goes something like this: start-ups are nimble and product focused. They embrace "cultures of code" and they build things. Start-ups move fast and adapt, and they celebrate experimentation and innovation. And some of the most famous start-ups are literally changing the way we live, work and play (see Facebook).

In the spirit of full disclosure, I once subscribed to this point of view but I do not any longer. Professional service firms like any industry are facing multiple challenges, from disruption generated in places like social media (anyone can be a publisher now) to the fact that there's convergence making it less relevant to distinguish how different your firm approaches the areas you provide services in (is it advertising, marketing, PR, or other?). In many cases, the dollars being pursued are up for grabs.

First, let's state that start-ups have their own issues. A very TINY percentage of them ever make it to a sustainable business model. Many start-ups are founded by ADD ridden entrepreneurs who build one, sell it for a modest price and move on to the next because that is what they do. Also, start-ups are in truth a commodity—there are thousands of them out there that are trying to be the next location based network just like the others before them trying to be the next Twitter and Facebook. Nobody talks about those.

Now let's move on to agencies and or consultancies. Some have actually figured out (or at least are trying to figure out) how to reconcile products vs. services. A social media agency called Mr. Youth created a community-rewards type product called Crowdtap and it's worth noting they even they call out the differences in the models:

Back to agencies and perhaps business in general. A few weeks ago in London, I had a very stimulating conversation with an Edelman colleague who was talking about "corporate memory" or simply put, the connection between the knowledge which is retained in any organization between their employees & their work product. It hit me that this is not only a challenge for "client side" businesses, but for agencies it can be a complete nightmare. Many agencies are revolving doors, where high turnover rates are expected and planned for. However, like any other business—each time a professional services employee leaves a firm, they take their corporate memory with them. In my opinion this may be the number one issue that any business, especially the professional service industry faces as disruptions continue to enter the market place.

My hypothesis here is that looking to the start-up world may not provide the inspiration agencies seek. In fact, the inspiration may lie in sustainable blue chip businesses who do a good job of retaining not only their most critical employees but the knowledge they amass as they spend their time with the company likely going from department to department. Having worked with several significant brands/companies over the years you can spot these individuals—they've put in their time and deeply understand the culture, values and mission of the company. They've provided value over the years and been there through good and bad times.

Whenever I meet an Edelman collegue who has been with the firm over 5 or 10+ years—(and there are many) I always ask them the same question. What keeps you here? The answer is usually consistent:

The peopleThe cultureThe work

Perhaps agencies need to look not to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world but to the sustainable business models that have withstood the test of time and are smart enough to invest in and keep their "corporate memory" intact. It just might be that unless you build the next Facebook or Google, that start-up culture is overrated and today's "empty suit" is actually an empty hoodie.

Thursday, June 02, 2011

On the heels of our influence panel at Mesh 2011, Klout has introduced a new feature they call "+K". A simple way to think of it is a like button for influence which connects someone to a topic which you choose. The move by Klout to add this feature signifies a broader effort which impacts conversations on the subject matter of digital influence—that influence is meaningless unless you have context such as what subject(s) people and organizations are credible in. As I said in a recent piece on a related issue, topical influence is what counts.

Is Klout Smart Enough?

Klout's move into this area depends on how quickly it's algorithm learns from both what you say (post) and what others think you are influential in. Above is a sample of three areas Klout thinks I MAY be "influential" in. They are far removed from the types of things I discuss but for some reason, the algorithm picks these in addition to others.

These topics (above) appear to be more relevant to some of the topics I do discuss. What makes the +K approach interesting is that topics do not remain static but change over time, presumably as a result of your activity and the way the algorithm is designed. In the screen capture below, you'll notice that the +K I gave to a connection has a shelf life of 43 hours. This is likely designed to address the reality that people can become influential in a specific topic for a short period of time (think about how individuals have leveraged their networks for causes).

Klout's biggest weakness here remains the fact that you have to be on the platform and that +K activity, while it has the potential to act as a sort of social currency is limited (right now) to being shared on Klout itself.

Topical Storms BrewingKlout isn't the only player in this space looking to tweak activity either by category, subject matter or relevancy. Sulia (below) uses Twitter lists and organizes them by category, listing profiles which have been most listed in a specific topic from the order of most listed to least (curating along the way). While the service is limited to Twitter only as opposed to others such as Peer Index, Klout and SocMetrics to name a few it provides a useful funciton which is to aggregate and organize profiles by categories which can quickly be scanned. Because Twitter lists are created by users (manually) and less likely to be gamed like follower counts, they serve as a significant indicator in regards to how an individual or organization is perceived.

Online Influence Measurement Remains In Its InfancyAs I mentioned in my panel at Mesh, we are at the very early stages of not only understanding, but harnessing and scaling efforts around digital influence. Most conversations are focused on scores and social graph analysis with a fixation on identifying "influencers". Identification is only the first of several steps—the more critical ones are engagement and management of an ecosystem which consists not only of stakeholders which hold various degrees of influence, but also the information or media itself which has its own potential to influence opinions, behaviors and actions. I also believe that a missing "indicator" is a simple metric borrowed from traditional digital marketing. Clicks. Simply put, we need to be able to analyze the percentage of clicks an "influencer" gets based on the total inventory of links they share in social streams. Clicking on links is a light action—but it is a measurable one. There will be much more activity in the influence space both on the external and internal operations of business. Be sure to watch the space closely as it matures.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Last week I had the honor of performing the opening Keynote at Community Conference 2011 hosted in Copenhagen Denmark. A delightful, high quality event with attendees coming from all parts of Scandinavia and Europe, it also featured talks from Dell's Bill Johnston and Good Magazine's Max Schorr. The full video from my talk (above) captured the theme I went with for the event. I made the case that changes in business, technology, society and media can only be met by a business which is able to embrace and scale it's "human side". And humans are social creatures, so by that logic a human business is naturally a social business. Here are a few visual highlights:

And this strikes at the heart of the matter. With all of this change, many businesses are slow to adapt or face significant challenges in the pursuit of tapping opportunities presented by the upheaval. But there is also disruption—as Wikileaks demonstrates it's becoming increasingly difficult to control the flow of information. For many organizations, there is nowhere to hide. Shortly after outlining the challenges, I offered up a brief definition of social business planning—what we consider to be the critical step in beginning to address these challenges. In short, it is this:

Make sense? Social business means doing business in a more connected, participatory and socially responsible fashion. If done correctly, it benefits multiple stakeholders: your customers, employees, advocates, partners, etc. But the bigger the business, the less human and less social in nature it is—so in short we all have a long way to go, but all signs point to connecting vs. disconnecting as the way business will be done in the not so distant future.